Preview: ModNation Racers

If Sony are currently on top of anything just now, it’s the embracing of user generated content. From the early dynamism of LittleBigPlanet, key PSN titles like Gravity Crash and PSP software like the awesome Beaterator, gamers of a creative nature are more than catered for with the PS3 and PSP.  The latest exclusive title is United Front’s ModNation Racers (MNR), ostensibly a kart racer but more importantly the next title – following Sackboy’s cross platform adventures – in the Play Create Share label.

January’s all too brief beta might have opened the door to what’s possible in MNR but there was certainly much locked away for the full release, not least in terms of the huge amount of customisation that’ll be possible once players have unlocked all the goodies that were only teased at in the demo.  If you’re unfamiliar with how the game stands up to the insane amount of content creation available in Media Molecule’s platformer, Racers lets you build your Mod (racer), your Kart and, best of all, your tracks.

In terms of your Mod, the affectionate (and descriptive) term for your on-screen avatar, the possibilities (as can be seen here) are endless.  At the time of writing, for example, there’s over 300 types of mouths and nearly as many eyes to pick from, and that’s not counting the near infinite amount of twisting, turning and sizing you can do with the decal editor, transforming a basic white shape into anything you’d care to invent.  Indeed, there’s even various material surfaces, meaning that rubber gimp is but a few clicks away.

Likewise, the track creation is a real delight.  For starters, it’s ridiculously easy to create an impressive circuit – simply ‘drive’ the road as you go, etching the rough outline, and then use the terrain tools to modify and deform the land, watching in awe as the game builds bridges, creates lakes and smooths any gaps on the fly.  It’s inspiring to watch, but even more to do it yourself and although you can go down to the tiniest detail yourself, it’s just as much fun to click the Auto Populate button and watch the game do it for you.

Of course, United Front haven’t left everything to the player – there’ll be 30 tracks on the disk itself across multiple environments and each will be peppered with speed boosts, power-ups and obstacles carefully placed to make the actual racing a challenge.  Thankfully, the main meat of the game, the Kart racing itself, is great.  Sure, the early versions suffer from a disappointing frame rate but that’s all undergoing some tuning just now and will be smoothed out in time for the game’s release in May.

You might think that the ability to create your own Mods, Karts and tracks would be enough, but ModNation Racers comes with a full array of community tools.  Sure, being able to publish your creations is an obvious choice but when the game’s central, driveable area features such delights as the “Top Mods” stand you know Sony are on the ball.  The stand, which shows off the community’s favourite user-created designs is a really neat touch and one that we’re sure will be a talking point for fans of the game.

There’s still a couple of months left before the game hits the shelves, during which time the developers will be ironing out the bugs, boosting the visuals and working on the load times, something which suffered a little too much in the January beta.  With the game foregoing standard menus in place of a 3D explorable world (with doors leading off to the garage, races etc) it’s clearly a graphically heavy title, but if United Front can make the whole thing nice and smooth we’d be delighted to zip around and chat with other gamers pre-race.

There’s a lot going for MNR.  The game will have offline split-screen multiplayer (4 players) in addition to the comprehensive online functionality and if they can find effective ways to communicate the masses of user created content to the players without overwhelming the experience United Front will be onto a winner.  Clearly, being good friends with Media Molecule has helped the process considerably, now all we have to do is wait and see just how good this new Play Create Share title will be.