But that’s not all that’s new…

There’s a flood of new racing games, and I also picked up ModNation Racers for the PS3. It’s much more Mario Kart-like with the arcadey handling, twisty tracks, shortcuts, random powerups, etc. The big hook for it is that you can customize things though, and there are already plenty of them (mostly well-known characters of course) being shared online. For your racer and vehicle, it’s purely cosmetic, but you can create tracks as well and I’ll have to check a bunch of them out.

Single-player also seems to suffer from the unfairness of becoming a target for attacks 10 feet from the finish line, dropping you back three places. Fortunately you can spend boost power on shielding yourself, but the timing is tricky. The AI is tough, and the passing requirements for unlocking items for modding are even tougher, so completing the single-player campaign isn’t going to be easy. Unfortunately, online has its problems too. Lobbies have to fill up from scratch with every new race, meaning you often only get half the full complement of 12 racers. And you have to go through annoyingly-long loading screens as you toggle back and forth between the online race, the ModSpot, the race, the ModSpot…

I also picked up 3D Dot Game Heroes out of curiosity, and it’s pretty much a clone of Zelda: Link To The Past, except in a 3D voxel-like presentation. There’s kind of a cheeky self-awareness to it all, but otherwise it hasn’t really had much of an effect so far, so it pretty much remains a Zelda-alike. I’ve only done the first temple (of six) so far, which is pretty much just part of the tutorial.

And as if I didn’t have enough racing games already, I wound up picking up Gran Turismo for the PSP when it was set at a new ‘classic’ pricing on PSN. It definitely feels like Gran Turismo, but I’m still struggling with the controls a bit. Using the dpad leads to fishtailing like crazy (though it’s better for minor adjustments to straighten yourself out), and with the analog nub I find myself lurching around corners trying to find the right amount of steering. Maybe it’ll just take time to adjust after playing Forza 3 so much lately.

The challenges are pretty much like the license tests of previous games, but the passing requirements are pretty fair and I’ve managed to get at least silver on all of them so far, and a few golds. No reward cars though, just cash. Other than that, you just pick a car and track and race a random selection of AI cars. (There’s a ‘drift mode’ too but I haven’t tried it yet.)

It’s not entirely what I’d hoped for, but it might be fun in small bursts, and it’ll get me a head start in GT5.