Review: ModNation Racers: Road Trip (Vita)

Does the latest game in the MNR franchise take pole-position, or is it sleeping at the wheel?

First things first, I LOVE ModNation Racers. The way you can create your racers and karts, and race them around your own tracks. The single player story with comedic commentators, giving you laughs between races. And of course, like all games of this type, it’s far more fun with your friends. What’s not to love?

Well… it seems that SCE San Diego Studio decided that only one of those three points were important. So behold Road Trip, the latest game in the ModNation Racers franchise, now with 66% less fun!

I figure that the best way to write this review is to compare it to its PS3 predecessor. And remember, this is supposed to be a sequel, not a port or just a handheld version.

Creation

Aside from the races themselves, this is the only part of the game that hasn’t changed much. Except that you are now forced to use the touch controls, and sometimes you press the wrong thing. I don’t get why they’ve done that. I’ve used buttons to play games for over 20 years, and I don’t like being forced to change. The buttons literally do nothing in the menus.

Crappy controls aside, this is the part the game excels at. You can create whatever character you want to race as, you can drive any car your mind can conceive (so long as the in-game tools have the parts you need), and you can race wherever you wish. Is it your lifelong dream to drive as Cloud Strife in a Spongebob Squarepants kart on course the shape of a Goomba? Now you can. Also, I recommend you start therapy right away.

Creating mods (the little guys you race as) and karts is a similar process to each other. You start with your basic model, add or change parts until you are happy, then you just take to the track, be it one you’ve created or downloaded or even one of the bog-standard efforts.

Creating tracks has changed ever so slightly from the PS3 version. On the PS3, you create your tracks by actually driving with a steam roller. This lets you draw out the track however you wish, while changing your angle for creating valleys and high ground, before going over with a cursor to change elements of the track, such as banks and road surfaces. On the Vita, this option remains, but they’ve also added a new option, which is to draw the track with your finger. I personally don’t like this method, as it’s a bit too fiddly. Actually driving the track gives you a better idea of how long it is, and lets you better map out what you want to do, and I’m glad they left that part in.

Racing

Racing in this game is exactly the same as on the PS3, but with the addition of 3 new pickup types. These are Ice, Fire and Radioactive, to go alongside Rockets, Sonic, Lightning and Boost. On the PS3 these pickups all looked the same, but on the Vita the pickups are colour-coded, so there’s less of a luck element involved. It’s like if you were playing MarioKart, but you knew which box contained the Starman and which contained a single green shell.

Once you have a pickup, be it a weapon or a boost, you can fire it in its first stage. Alternatively, you can save it and pick up one or two more to increase the power. For example, you could fire a rocket straight ahead of you, fire a homing missile at the guy in front, or you could fire a single homing missile for every racer in front of you.

It’s not all power-ups, though. You can get mini-boosts by drifting, and fill up a meter by drifting, drafting, air time and air spins. This meter can be used to boost, or to activate a shield to protect you from attacks, or you can sideswipe your opponents… great if you’re neck and neck with some chump on the final straight. It adds another fun element… are you quick enough to dodge the attacks?

Single Player

MNR on PS3 boasted a story penned by Hollywood writers. It was by no means an amazing story, but it at least had one… which is more than can be said of most other kart racers. Why does Bowser race against Mario, when he could be kidnapping Peach again? The story gave you another reason to progress (other than unlocking all the parts).

So why it was decided to remove it from the Road Trip is beyond me. In my opinion, it changes the game into something more similar to its competitors. Now you’re just racing to unlock stuff, instead of racing to progress the story (and unlock stuff).

Alright, so racing games don’t tend to have stories. Except for some titles, it’s usually just a case of racing and unlocking new cars/tracks… but the fact that the first had a story and the sequel doesn’t irritates me.

As on the PS3, the single player career mode involves you racing against 7 opponents, collecting the power-ups to boost/shoot your way to victory. You have some objectives to break up the monotony, such as ‘Earn 20,000 Drift Points’ or ‘Sideswipe 3 Opponents’. Sometimes these are easy and you’ll just get them without thinking, and other times they can be trickier and may require a number of attempts. For completing these extra objectives, you’ll unlock a few more parts for your creations. There are also 5 tokens for you to pick up in each race, which can be redeemed for kart parts.

But hey, single player isn’t everything these days. All anyone cares about now is…

Multiplayer

Except, they’ve gone and messed this one up too. ModNation Racers enabled you to race online against up to 7 opponents, whereas Road Trip only supports ad-hoc multiplayer with up to 3 friends. So the game does at least have some form of multiplayer, but do you have three friends with Vitas and copies of this game? And if so, do you live anywhere near me?

Instead of online multiplayer, SCE San Diego are assuring us that time trial ghosts are a reasonable substitute, eliminating one of the most fun parts of the racing. Weapons. Erich Waas, San Diego Studio’s Director of Product Development said this:

“I know there are some of you that are disappointed that ModNation Racers: Road Trip doesn’t let you play head-to-head online other than ad-hoc.
“If all we ever did as developers is rehash features that have been done in previous games, we’d still be entering passwords instead of using save files and you’d have to start the entire game over after you lost your three lives (extra 1-ups aside).”

So, online multiplayer is a rehashed feature? In this day and age, online multiplayer is a must for this kind of game. And it’s not like it can’t be done; look at WipEout 2048; that game doesn’t only have online multiplayer, but you can play against PS3 gamers with WipEout HD too! Why couldn’t this be done with ModNation Racers and Road Trip?

Really, I can’t see why online multiplayer would be left out of a title like this. It should have been one of the most important aspects of the game, and I feel like they’ve overlooked it to add stupid features that nobody will be able to use to their full potential. I’ll cover those now.

New Features

Road Trip is more than just a title for this game. Sony figured that this game would be best enjoyed if you actually play it while travelling, as evidenced by the Travel Points system.

Travel Points are earned when you visit a certain location, and earning enough then unlocks unique items for the track creator. An example would be unlocking Big Ben for your track by actually visiting Big Ben and checking in… which would presumably mean you need an internet connection. If you’re the owner of a 3G Vita, good for you. If not, you might have to beg the Elders of the Internet for their password. And if you don’t live in London nor have the means to get there, like me… well, who cares about a virtual giant clock tower? Hmph!

But it doesn’t end there. The game has other locations, such as Chicago, Beijing, Buenos Aires… 45 in total, so be sure to get your Air Miles if you actually want to unlock those parts anytime soon. The “good” news is that once a location gets enough visits, the pieces unlock for all players, essentially meaning that you don’t have to do anything. So, when all the pieces are unlocked, new players of this game will find the feature completely useless.

Another new feature is continual match-making. Whereas in the PS3 version you’d be automatically pitted against the ghost of fastest player in the world for the track you’re on, on the Vita you’ll be matched up against someone a little faster than you. You can also try to outpace those who have set times near you, using location data and Vita’s ‘Near’ application.

Overall: 5/10

It’s funny. When I started playing the game, I didn’t think about any of this stuff. I read previews and articles that complained about the lack of online multiplayer, and I didn’t care. I love the PS3 game, and thought it wouldn’t matter to me since I don’t play online all that much. But yet as I tried out every part, it just infuriated me more and more that this ‘sequel’ is more of a downgraded port with questionable gimmicks. I’m actually planning on trading the game towards a PSN voucher or WipEout 2048 when I’m next in town.

The only thing I can think of is that they have purposely tried to sabotage the MNR franchise so that people will buy LittleBigPlanet Karting. Either that, or SCE San Diego didn’t know what they were doing without United Front Games (who worked on the first) to carry them.

But the game isn’t all bad. The racing is still fun… but as fun as can be without friends. I think that if you enjoyed the PS3 version (or even if you didn’t), you will be disappointed. This game had so much potential, and it has been wasted on gimmicks. We don’t want to be able to check in at locations with our games; we have cameras and souvenir shops for that. Just gimme a game I can play with my friends and have a good time with, which sadly this game is not. Save your money… or else like me, you’ll wish you had.