Modnation Racers Hands-On Preview

Combat is mostly to blame for this, despite its mild novelty value. Weapons can be upgraded by collecting additional item pods. One pod might pack a single unguided rocket; pick up another, and that rocket will become two; score the full three for a ragequit-inducing homing fusillade.

Trouble is, it’s too easy to bust out the super-weapons and too difficult to counter them. You can generate a forceshield by holding a face button, but doing so drains your nitro tank, and there’s rarely enough nitro to go around – or at least, not on the 20 plus pre-fabbed campaign courses, with 12 competitors and four or five rearming spots per lap.

Sheer bloody overkill.

Pick-ups themselves are also rather unimaginative, for all the (Hollywood-talent-penned) storyline’s singing the virtues of creativity and personality over conservative design. Other than rockets, you’ve got a sonic blast, lightning bolt, repair and speed boost. The weapons are much the same kettle of exploding fish once triple-charged, which is to say they’re all visual variations on WipEout’s legendary Quake. Anyone hoping for pyrotechnics as varied as those of Vigilante 8 or Micro Machines may be disappointed.

Finishing third or better in each event is all that’s required to keep the storyline steaming on. Top the podium, though, and bother to fulfil secondary objectives like drifting round particular corners or stomping big-name racers, and you’ll bag more swag for the purposes of course, kart and driver pimping – bumper stickers, palm trees and bowl-cuts, paint jobs and skin grafts, toothy fenders, pirate galleons and Victorian top hats.

The vehicle and avatar customisation suite appears to be strictly cosmetic, which is perhaps excusable given the already questionable balancing. It’s also gloriously tacky and indecorous, mashing together Communist sickles, Germanic crosses and 80s wheel-arch flame gouts like a hyperactive teenager – or rather, like the hyperactive teenager many of its target players may once have been.

Far too coordinated for our tastes. How about some batwings?

In some ways the game Modnation Racers is most comparable to is FarmVille, another easy-to-get-into community-focussed experience with questionable inner substance but lashings of flair. Unlike FarmVille, however, Modnation Racers will be available for an upfront charge on closed hardware whose primary users were playing titles of this sort before they could spell. Its core mechanics will come under far more rigorous scrutiny than those of Zylom, and aside from some excellent customisation options United Front has yet to prove itself entirely worthy of attention.

Modnation Racers hits North American PlayStation 3s in May. Other release dates are to be announced.