Reviews// ModNation Racers: Road Trip

ModNation Racers first arrived on the PlayStation 3 in 2010. Nearly two years on, SCE San Diego releases a new version in time for the Vita’s launch - and it’s exactly the same game. How does this happen?

I’m going to pretend that there’s no such word in the dictionary as ‘Lazy,’ and see how the features of Sony’s new handheld has been put to good use.

Well, the short answer is, they haven’t. The presentation of the menus is pretty awful, relying on the Vita’s touchscreen for navigation and being rather unresponsive as a result. Instead of a free-roaming approach like the PS3 original, here you swipe your fingers across the touch screen to rotate around a carousel of options.

Switching rooms rarely works - the bumbling menu environment flirts with you by moving halfway to the next option room, before snapping back to the menu you were just in. Considering that you always start the game facing the ‘Favourites’ menu (which, being just a screen that contains all the system settings, is far from my favourite), several swipes away from the actual ‘Race’ room, this is bloody annoying.

On a graphical level, the textures look pretty bad in this game. It’s most noticeable when modifying your character or car, but there are a lot of menu assets and on-screen items that are of a very poor quality indeed. It gives the impression that the game isn’t finished. Compared to the PS3 version, the graphics during races are only marginally worse, although you do encounter some framerate issues when things get rather busy.

What I don’t understand is why this is happening. When something like Uncharted: Golden Abyss and WipEout 2048 can move like greased lightning and look fantastic on the PlayStation Vita, I’m confused that ModNation Racers: Road Trip has a hard time with cartoon characters and environments- which arguably puts less pressure on the hardware.

There aren’t even any persistent online play options to consider here, that’s the funny thing about it. With less network weight on the code, surely you’d expect this game to run somewhat better than the PS3 version did (and the PS3 version ran like an absolute dog inbetween races). If you want to play with friends, you’re stuck with an ad-hoc connection - no online multiplayer is a grave oversight for a game that begs for social interaction on a global scale.

It’s not all bad news - although the network features only amount to sharing creations, it does a fine job of handling user generated content. Through the Share Station menu, you can publish, download and rate content that you can create in other areas of the game - karts, characters and tracks. Downloading creations is relatively quick and easy, as is uploading your own content.

Much focus has been made on encouraging creation and the sharing of content between friends, and there’s an interesting feature within the Share Station called Mod Explorer. This uses location-based check-ins (from an internet connection) to unlock additional gear that can be used for fine-tuning your mods - sign into PlayStation Network near the London Eye to get a bunch of car parts and skins, for example.

Creating characters, karts and tracks is much easier than it was on console. And that’s saying a lot, because it was relatively simple enough on the PS3. You can drag and drop items onto your cars and characters now, and use pinch-zooming on the touch screen to make various decals larger and smaller. There is a bit of a performance hit when creating, though.

Tracks is the creation mode that benefits that most from Vita’s touch inputs, with the front screen used to literally ‘draw’ a basic track and then paint decorations on, while the rear touch pad can raise terrain as you please. It’s quite impressive.

However, all this emphasis on creating and sharing content has meant that no attention was paid to the actual gameplay experience, and that’s a real shame because ModNation Racers can be a nice little karting game when you actually get into a race.

The controls are weighty, power-ups are balanced and can be stacked for some interesting results, and performing tricks off of ramps is rather cool. It’s just a shame that the game has a horrific problem with rubber-band AI. You’ll get so frustrated in later levels because the computer will catch you so quickly it’s inhuman.

There’s only five tours in the single-player campaign mode, plus a hidden bonus tour if you satisfy a number of conditions during the game. You can of course select Single Race and play any of your own created or downloaded tracks, which adds an almost infinite amount of replay value - but it doesn’t counter the feeling that the Play part of the Play.Create.Share philosophy was a complete afterthought here.

It really feels like San Diego studios just phoned this one in. That’s the depressing thing. There’s been no effort to optimise the original PS3 code, nor to add value to the single-player offerings. Gameplay has fallen by the wayside and taken a back seat to the fluff of the menu screens and the pomp of the sharing options. ModNation Racers: Road Trip is a shockingly average non-sequel, and a first-party exclusive franchise like this deserves much, much better.

Pros:
+ Simple and fun track and character editors
+ Gameplay is entertaining enough - of what little there is
+ Fantastic sharing options

Cons:
- No online multiplayer modes
- Gameplay offering is poor, complete afterthought
- Bad loading times

SPOnG Score: 6 / 10