My ModNation Racers Impressions
To start off I want to say that the game has exceeded my expectations in the racing (I've been playing this for 2 hours straight and went through everything in the demo).
How so? The gameplay is pretty much perfect. There are so many options at your disposal and I love how you have to actually use strategy, while racing with these options you have.
Either the people criticizing the gameplay in this just really suck, rushed to review the game, don't get how you're suppose to play the game OR I'm the best fucking modnation racer ever.
I've probably played 20 races (5 of them split screen with my brother and didn't notice anything with the frame rate) and it only took me about 4 races to finally get all the controls down and understand how to drift perfectly. Drifting the first big turn in the modnation demo feels amazing and I don't see what is so difficult about the controls. I will say that there is a lot to learn from doing tricks in the air, to side-swiping, to shielding. You just have to keep racing to learn them. For me the learning curve was about 30 minutes. If you actually try hard you can get 1-4 place against the hardest and 2nd hardest CPU once you nail all the gameplay mechanics down.
Overall, I already feel prepared for the retail version.
I haven't mentioned the obligatory Mario Kart Wii, but compared to MK and other kart racers, Modnation's has a incredible sense of speed and is a little more chaotic and MUCH more physical than the others.
When I boost into a drift and race along the whole track, I always feel like I'm going so fast that I have to be cautious on every turn. Once you get use to it, it the racing feels very nice and exhilarating. You basically feel comfortable hitting that drift going into certain turns. I also mentioned that it's chaotic. Basically what I mean is, when you're racing in a group the computers are insane. Like in Mario Kart, you don't want to be a pack of racers who will use weapons and sideswipe you (especially on the hardest difficulties). The karts have a sense of weight and you when you crash and get bumped around, you really feel that impact compared to Mario Kart Wii. The mods and your mod that you are racing against act very lively and animate to every impact against their kart. The mods are also always trash talking each other through grunts and other expressions while the announcer (kind of annoying) is always running his mouth. Therefore, the game does have some personality. Also, I really love side-swiping people and increasing my meter that way. I've been able to pull off some serious ownage by for example: knocking a mod around by side-swiping a CPU into wall then activating my full shield right before a barrage of missiles rained on me.
I also really enjoy the sound of the weapons and the sound of just smashing into racers and screwing them over. These are some of the touches that enhances the gameplay and fun of the game.
The weapons are indeed powerful, but I've been able to own the CPU by timing my shield usage before I get hit by HOLDING down circle (like I just mentioned). If you're constantly drifting and doing tricks when you're suppose to, most of the time you can defend these attacks. I played the track in the demo enough to know which turns that you should always be drifting on and that before the finish line, you can ALWAYS do a 720 spin and hit that last boost before finishing.
I really like this balance in the gameplay and I know the online racing will be a blast because of the consideration they've put into it. In addition, I played both the pure/action races and they were both a lot of fun. Pure is the one without any items and the gameplay mechanics alone makes pure racing amazing because then you get to focus on using your boosting, side-swiping, drifting, and execution of tricks to help you win. This creates amazing potential for some strategic online racing.
Loading is longer than it should be, but I didn't notice too much because I was restarting races a lot and when you do that, there's no loading. I'm very happy that this going to be patched up too.
Visually, the game looks a lot better when you're playing and watching everything in motion. Since the gameplay is faster, everything is more intense. When you're watching gameplay videos of this online, the gameplay doesn't seem like this even though it is. Gametrailers complained saying that the style of the tracks looks generic. I'm sorry but, when I'm into a racing match against hard CPU's don't really have time to notice the beautifully constructed buildings and the nice lake in background. This game is going to get loads of DLC anyways...
My question is: for the reviewers who negatively criticized the gameplay, how much did they actually bother to learn how to play it properly?
Is it the fact that it wasn't enough like Mario Kart that they felt that it was inferior?
I kind of felt like that many of the reviews just blew off some of the exciting additions to this game and just a lot of aspects for granted.
To me, this demo felt like this was a demo to a AAA game.
To me, the gameplay in this has surpassed Mario Kart.
I haven't even mentioned one thing about the creation aspect of Modnation Racers. This is probably going to be the most fun game I play this year along with Red Dead Redemption and Starcraft II. I don't see how this only has an 81 on Metacritic.
This is the best kart racing game I've ever played next to Diddy Kong Racing and these games are king for their respective times in this genre.
