Still, the menus make it simple enough to share your creations and download others. Road Trip's more traditional menu interface suffices, though it lacks that uniqueness that made the original so cohesive. On the PlayStation 3, you accessed all your options from a single hub and drove your kart toward whatever feature you wanted to access. This is one of the more normal-looking karts you can create. Unless you have tiny fingers, stuff may not land where you want, and subsequent fiddling may have you wondering, 'Why not just let me use the buttons?' In fact, the general interface for choosing submenus may have you wondering it again, what with the small, somewhat unresponsive wheel of touch icons you must use. Placing scenery, obstacles, and other tidbits can be irritating given the imprecision of the touch-screen controls.

The cleverer you want to be, however, the more of a hassle it is to translate your vision. Driving around a track of your own devising also delivers that rush of seeing your imagination spill onto the screen. It's a joy to see your creative concoctions spring to life, and thus a joy to receive a post-race overview of all the doohickeys you just earned. Just allowing the game to randomize your onscreen avatar can bring about such cute results: a googly-eyed bright-green frog behind the wheel of a bright-yellow hot rod, for example.

The more you race, and the better you are at it, the more you get to toy with bits and pieces. The robust tools allow you a good deal of freedom with the karts you devise, the racers you outfit, and the tracks you lay. Yet the racing seems almost an afterthought in ModNation Racers: Road Trip, which is one-quarter racing game and three-quarters creation suite. Now Playing: Video Review - ModNation Racers: Road Trip

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