Sorry if there's already a thread on this but wanted to know what peeps think...
I've checked it out a little and think its pretty solid.
Potential to become an instant classic and definite GOTY possibility

Between this and GoW III on the horizon, it is a great time to have a PS3

...and Heavy Rain...and GT 5.

If they aped the control/feel of Mario Kart reasonably well, I'm totally in.

Yes, this game is great. There are some problem with the beta (load times and server issues), but it has great potential to be a huge time-waster if they fix those things. I sunk an hour into it last night before I noticed how late it was!

I just got the Beta and have been liking it so far once I got the hang of the controls and started drifting around corners and building up the boost meter. The customization seems really good, I just wish they would let you create a sticker with multiple layers and then apply it, rather than having to do all the work as you apply the layers.

I got in, but have yet to try it...seems fun, positive reviews thus far.

Just snagged a beta code from Facebook. I'll try this out tonight.

Outside of the issues mentioned, especially load times. This game fucking rocks!!

I'll have to give this a try, a friend of mine works for the company who makes it and has been working on it for the last year or so - so it'll be cool to see the fruits of his labour.

I'm dangerously close to preordering this, so.....bump.

If anybody knows how to get a code at this point, I'd love some tips.

Barring that, I'd like to hear people's thoughts who are in the game. How does it compare to Mario Kart?

Beta has been over and done with for a while. I think there was a followup EU beta, but that has ended as well as far as I know.

I definitely enjoyed the beta. And at the NYC Move meetup, I played the most recent build and it was a lot more solid than the beta. I already have this pre-ordered (have had it pre-ordered since july of last year) and am very excited. for someone like you that made such great use of the build tools in LBP, I think you could have a lot of fun with this one, too.

Ahh...I didn't know it was over.

I'll be interested in seeing the tools, but it seems like there'd be a lot more room for creativity in a platformer than there is in a racer.

At a minimum, you know every Mario Kart track ever will be represented in the first week.

Really, I'm more interested in how the game itself feels, how well the weapons/defenses work, and how well balanced it is. Also, are the cars all spec'd the same just with different skins, or are they different based on weight/power/etc?

Each car is different. You have your typical heavy, medium, light cars. And I think within that, as you customize your car, you can change acceleration vs top speed and things along that nature. I say I think because I never did any of that.

Game feels really good. During the beta I had a harder time with the weapons and defenses, but this last time I played everything felt much smoother and accessible. I think the Mario Kart weapons are really basic, which makes it extremely accessible. The weapons in MNR can be treated from that basic standpoint (pick up and fire) but I think there's also a lot of room in there to ramp up what you can do with them with some skills. Like in Warhawk, I can easily get into a Warhawk. Fly around, shoot things, fire my missiles, have fun. But I also have the ability to learn how to use everything to its fullest which would make flying the Warhawk an even more rewarding experience (these are assumptions as I can't do all that in a Warhawk.) Both Mario Kart and MNR have the pick up and play ease, but MNR has a lot more to explore gameplay wise.

The balance issues were a big goal for the MNR developers, seeing people's complaints about Mario Kart's rubber-banding, blue shell issues and more. And to me the game seems balanced.

And yes, LBP offers a lot more room for building and creativity, but I think MNR is gonna start seeing some really awesome and well designed tracks.

I'm happy because with this game, I'll have absolutely no reason to turn on my Wii anymore. The one holdout was Mario Kart.

Long post, sorry.

No worries. That was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

And you still need to turn on your Wii for Mario Galaxy, Metroid and Zelda.

This game looks like a sure-thing!

I thought I'd recently read the opposite, that the customization of your car was basically cosmetic and all cars will behave the same. If what you're saying is true, then my excitement for this game is renewed.

Please forgive me if I am wrong. I did just read around on the net and it certainly seems more like what you are saying. The heavy/medium/light thing was an assumption on my part based on the look of some of the vehicles. However, I could swear that I heard the ModNation producer say at the Sony meetup where I played it again that there was a sliding bar customization for top speed vs acceleration and others. Maybe I misheard , but I believe that's what he told one of the other gamers.

From doing a little more research, it seems that besides the customization bar I mentioned above, there's another bar for drifting vs. handling. On top of that, there is supposedly a third bar, but what that is, I don't know. There is also apparently an interview somewhere on the net with a producer who says that the hundreds of different tires, engines and more than you can customize your cart with will subtly affect how good your cart is.

None of this, of course, is definite until the game releases. But it does seem that the carts do get some kind of stats customization

You would hope that a game called Modnation Racers would allow for a bit of customization!

From what I've seen, this game looks much more appealing than any character-based kart racer I've seen, but it'll probably sell about 1% of what Mario Kart sells. And, of course, it could suffer from the same thing LBP did, where a lot of players didn't think the controls felt "right"...which I think translates to "like Mario". That's really my biggest fear about the game.

Just won a ModNation Racers vinyl car off twitter!

Starting to get excited for this game.

Preordered this and Mario Galaxy as upcoming birthday presents for my son. Looking forward to it.

Joystiq review:

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/05/06/re...nation-racers/

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Thanks! And that's pretty clever -- giving away DLC before the game comes out. Probably costs very little and gets a lot more people to end up buying a $60 game.

This game wasn't even on my radar until I saw that review. It really seems like everything that Mario Kart should have become if Nintendo bothered to update the title since the N64.

I'm really looking forward to this one.

I have some ideas for a Dark City themed track, but I don't know to what extent you can have moving parts on your track. At any rate, I'm sure I'll come up with something to amuse myself...but probably nobody else.

You do a Dark City and I'm there.

When I first heard you could create custom cars, I had totally primed myself for the Ecto-1 but that fartstick in the video did it. So that killed my dreams.