MNR is a whole new breed of cart racing for modern technology, but not without its' quirks...
First of all let's get the whole "Mario Kart killer" thing out of the way. Is MNR a Mario Kart killer? I find the two are too different to be compared in that way. Mario Kart is just racing. It's great racing, but just racing. MNR gives you that same great racing, but with killer graphics, great animations, and huge amounts of customization. Mario Kart is just as good for 'the old days' as MNR is for the modern age. It all depends on if you prefer the nostalgic feeling Mario Kart gives or the cutting-edge technology that MNR gives.
So ModNation Racers starts the gamer off by automatically throwing them into a race when they first start the game. It's a nice tutorial that will get the racer off to a quick start. After the race you're taken to a small town looking place where you can drive your car up to different booths to decide on what you want to do next. This is your main hub and where you'll spend a lot of time in MNR. This is pretty neat because in most games we rely on menus to choose what we do next. In ModNation Racers we instead are given a virtual environment where we can drive around, with other online racers from around the world, going from booth to booth and doing what we need to do. You can also just drive around and annoy people, do crazy jumps, and check out other online player's cars as they drive around taking care of their business. Also, you can chat with them, so the notion that they aren't really people and are computer objects acting as people will be put to rest pretty quickly.
This hub, which sort of resembles a carnival, has booths for many things. These include places to customize your car, create tracks, customize your character, view other players' creations, view fast lap times, buy stuff, share your creations, and a few other things i'm forgetting.
This hub is also the place where you can start races from. This includes a booth to go start your career, a booth to start an online race and a booth to start a split-screen 2 or 4 player local race.
So now that you know what the central environment is like let's get into some specifics.
Creating things is fun. There isn't much to say about it really. The track creator is extremely easy and fun to use and you can create some insane tracks. Customizing your character is easy and full of options. If you liked LittleBigPlanet's customization of characters then you'll love this even more. The same goes for customizing your car. Fun stuff.
The graphics are awesome but I think some reviews may over-exaggerate them too much. They aren't insanely amazing graphics like one might consider Killzone 2 as having, or the new Red Dead Redemption, or any serious racing game. These graphics are meant to be fun, big, and not completely perfect. You'll be impressed though at how big and beautiful the environments are and how detailed the characters are but you do not want to take people too seriously who say its the greatest looking PS3 game ever. It's not.
Maybe I'm just new to the game but I find the animations halarious, especially for when a player is executing a big jump. It adds a lot of life to the racing.
As for the racing, it's a lot like Mario Kart. You race around, gathering items to use as weapons, trying to avoid other players' weapons, and trying to win. There isn't much more to it except that MNR has some insane jumps and you'll be trying to increase your hang-time score with each one.
There is splitscreen for 2 and 4 players. It's very fun and the graphics and framerate do not suffer during it, but read my gripes below for more info.
So let's gripe a little...
Splitscreen online... If you have a buddy, or a loved one, you wanted to play splitscreen AND online with then you can do that, but with some exceptions. First, they are only your guest. They can't sign in and customize all of their things and play under their signin name while you're playing under yours. If you liked how it worked in LittleBigPlanet, it doesn't work the same here. Only the main player has their name shown and can customize their things, the second player is only a guest.
Also, you can't play ranked matches with splitscreen. You can only play for-fun matches. Sure, they're definately fun, but people just don't play them as much because they prefer ranked, so you and your couch buddy may end up sitting there waiting for a race to start.
Maybe the above won't affect you much but for myself and my buddy we were planning to use our PSN names at the same time and use our customized characters at the same time, and its just not possible.
You cannot play 4 player splitscreen online.
Choppy framerate is a problem in the central hub area when you start to see alot of other online racers setting up their games and messing around.
The loading times are annoying. They aren't deal-breakers like some people seem to think but you will get frustrated. I would say they are about 30 seconds long.
The verdict... 9/10: The actual racing is a blast while the graphics and animations are exciting and well done. The virtual world, instead of a menu system, is a big plus too. Online play is very fun and integrated well, regardless of the limitations while playing with a buddy. Considering most gripes pertain to "extra" things and not to the actual racing, this racer will be hard to beat for awhile.
Pros: Graphics, sounds, animations, customization, constant online world and player interaction, sharing, actual racing
Cons: Load times, graphics not PERFECT like we expect in a PS3 exclusive, online limitations with a couch buddy, framerate issues in main gathering area