ModNation Racers Beta First Review

I have been playing the ModNation Racers Beta for a couple of days now and here is what I have to say thus far about the game.

The game itself has ENORMOUS potential and a ridiculously high replay value.  The game can best be described as Little Big Planet and Mario Karts love child.  The kart racing is very fun, drift around corners, jump huge gaps in the track, attack other racers with action items such as tracking missles and time warps, increase your boost and race your way to first place.  The game drops you directly into the ModSpot which is your "home-base" where you can meet up with friends, make new ones or view, rate and download the top rated Mods, Karts and Tracks.  From there, you can also enter the Create Station where you can customize your Mod, your Kart, Shop for DLC, access the Share Station and build your own tracks.  You can also access the Race Station where you can play online, quick play (instant racing action), split-screen race, play career mode, play Hot Lap (time-trial) and play the other custom maps created by the community and test drive upcoming content.

The customization of your Mod (your racer) is very detailed, there are literally millions of combinations and you can get very detailed on your characters look.  I would have to say it is one of the better games for customizing your character than I have seen in a very long time.  Not only can you choose your clothes and accessories, you can change the color of anything to any color on the color wheel in any shade.  You can add stickers to your clothes and recolor stickers as well.  Customizing your kart is also similar, millions of combinations from import tuners to monster trucks to cardboard karts.  Choose your engines, body, driver seat (you can even choose to sit on a thrown and by thrown I mean toilet seat), suspension, spoiler, etc.

Building your own racetrack is super easy and very detailed.  You can get as deep into it as you'd like by building everything from scratch and putting in every single element yourself or you can simple lay your track and then use the systems auto-populate feature which automatically puts all the scenery, boost pads, sharp turn signals, rails, action items, etc. into your track for you.  You literally can create your own racetrack in less than 5 minutes or you can spend hours on one track making it mod-tastic! 

The beta includes three maps from the full game; Farm Frenzy, Market Run and Sandstorm (see below, in order from left to right).  The beta includes full access to the Create Station including building and sharing your own tracks and a couple of race options including playing online with up to 12 players or compete in time trials in the Hot Lap.  My only complaint thus far is the game has frozen on occasion, getting online has been difficult and loading screens are frequent and long... hopefully all to be solved before the full game releases in Spring 2010.