ModNation Racers, Sony’s second offering in the “Play, Create, Share” series, has garnered some pretty glowing reviews, with 36 different media outlets (including Gamervision) scoring the game at an 85 or above.  Conversely, very few reviewers had serious problems with the game; only 6 reviews scored it under 70.  Those few malcontents generally had three problems with the kart racer; annoyingly long load times, a meaningless, unfunny cut-scenes, and overly-aggressive AI drivers who had a tendency to knock players out of first place at the last possible second.   In an effort to solve one of those problems, Sony has announced that a new “Casual Mode” will be coming to the game soon.

A new patch will be released in the near future that will introduce Casual Mode, which is described as having “less “aggressive” computer-controlled racers.”  Presumably, this will bring in potential customers who would have bought the game if not for the some times cheap AI difficulty.

I’ve never played ModNation Racers, but judging from the comments left on various forums around the net, the AI issue seems to be one that people are concerned about, but it’s by no means the biggest problem.  According to, well, pretty much everyone who cares about the game, the big issue is the load times.  I understand that it’s tough, if not impossible, to shrink load times for the actual races, but it seems like a patch could have addressed some of the labyrinthine menu screens of Modnation Racers.  Players everywhere are practically begging for Sony to add in new menu paths for the game, like one that would allow players to go to the next course in one click, instead of having to go back to the previous menu to select it.  Apparently, Sony has its own priorities, though, and for now, at least, Casual Mode will just have to do.