GamesCom 09: Modnation Racers Preview
Post by trog @ 05:35am 20/08/09 | Comments
AusGamers checked out Sony's kart spin on the popularity of LittleBigPlanet at this year's GamesCom, Modnation Racers. Read on for our thoughts...
At GamesCom, Sony offered up an in-depth presentation of the upcoming PlayStation 3 racing game, Modnation Racers, giving us a chance to check out - first-hand - the content creation tools that provide nearly unlimited creativity to gamers within this title.
Boasting the ability to create fully customised urban vinyl-inspired characters that you can race with, as well as your own unique Karts to race them in, and the ability to build your own tracks (using the same tools that the actual game developers have used to create the official ones that will ship with the game), Modnation Racers is quite clearly targeting users who are looking for a title that gives them a bunch of things to do.
In fact, this made up the core of the demonstration. We were only treated to a few minutes of the actual racing part of the game - the rest of it was to show how flexible the character creation tool is as well as how easy it is to create your own unique tracks, with the figure "five minutes" quoted as an example of how quickly you can throw something together and then race around in it.
The character customisation (not something that I personally understand; I always use the default character/avatar, probably out of laziness more than anything else) is quite involved. You start with a blank white blob of a character. You then have the option to skin the blob with interesting patters, add eyes, pants, shirts, ears, mouths, hats, helmets, glasses, hair, masks, facial hair, and more - selecting from a stack of different options and then being able to customise those options in various ways (for example, you can throw on a pair of crazy bat ears, then make them huge and orient them whichever way you want). Special parts can be unlocked as you progress through the game.
(As I was watching this demonstration, wondering about the myriad of crazy creations that are undoubtedly going to be spawned as a result of this functionality, I couldn't help but compare it to Spore. I was tempted to ask them if they'd thought about releasing a PC-based character editor (ala the Spore Creature Creator) to build awareness and let people create amazing creatures and then have the huge desire to a) upload them to YouTube and b) hopefully go out and buy the game so they can play them, but then I thought that was an idea that was just too brilliant to give away to just anyone.)
We were then given some hands-on time to throw a level together, just so we could truly see how easy it was (I was prepared to believe that it was easy, but it was nice to see it first-hand). It's a pretty simple - yet powerful - editor that lets you pick from a huge variety of options to spray down an interesting track. You can deform terrain to create interesting landscapes, position buildings and trees and various other obstacles (including camels), and even set the sun in the sky to provide you with the right sort of lighting. You can throw in weapons, ramps, speed-up points - everything you'd expect in this sort of game.
So after all this creationism, we finally got a chance to see how the game felt to play. It looks and feels very much like a Mario Kart affair - if you're into that, then you'll probably feel right at home with this. It's got a lot of similar elements, including weapons that you pick up and knock your competitors around with.
As you're whizzing around the track, you can also get bonus points for doing certain moves, such as drifts or big jumps. These points all accumulate as a booster option, which you can fire to give you a burst of speed when it's most needed.
Visually the build we saw looked very cool - the lighting and tile blending shown in the editor was very impressive, all happening almost in real-time across the entire map. There were a few graphical glitches but it seems safe to expect these to be ironed out as the game approached completion for its launch in 2010. We also found a couple of bugs in our created map where our kart ended up driving below the map, so I feel like we contributed to the development while we were playing the game.
The value of this game looks to be clearly in how customisable it is, and Sony are pushing this aspect of it heavily, making sure potential gamers know that once you've got it you can do different things with it every time and really get mileage (driving pun intended) out of it. The core element of the game for me though would always be the driving, and while the bash I got was quite fun, I'd want a bit more time with it to see if it had enough depth to keep my attention. If you're a PS3 owner though and looking for a Mario Kart-esque experience to occupy your time and to impress your friends with dazzling creations, then keep an eye out for this one.
Boasting the ability to create fully customised urban vinyl-inspired characters that you can race with, as well as your own unique Karts to race them in, and the ability to build your own tracks (using the same tools that the actual game developers have used to create the official ones that will ship with the game), Modnation Racers is quite clearly targeting users who are looking for a title that gives them a bunch of things to do.
In fact, this made up the core of the demonstration. We were only treated to a few minutes of the actual racing part of the game - the rest of it was to show how flexible the character creation tool is as well as how easy it is to create your own unique tracks, with the figure "five minutes" quoted as an example of how quickly you can throw something together and then race around in it.
The character customisation (not something that I personally understand; I always use the default character/avatar, probably out of laziness more than anything else) is quite involved. You start with a blank white blob of a character. You then have the option to skin the blob with interesting patters, add eyes, pants, shirts, ears, mouths, hats, helmets, glasses, hair, masks, facial hair, and more - selecting from a stack of different options and then being able to customise those options in various ways (for example, you can throw on a pair of crazy bat ears, then make them huge and orient them whichever way you want). Special parts can be unlocked as you progress through the game.
(As I was watching this demonstration, wondering about the myriad of crazy creations that are undoubtedly going to be spawned as a result of this functionality, I couldn't help but compare it to Spore. I was tempted to ask them if they'd thought about releasing a PC-based character editor (ala the Spore Creature Creator) to build awareness and let people create amazing creatures and then have the huge desire to a) upload them to YouTube and b) hopefully go out and buy the game so they can play them, but then I thought that was an idea that was just too brilliant to give away to just anyone.)
We were then given some hands-on time to throw a level together, just so we could truly see how easy it was (I was prepared to believe that it was easy, but it was nice to see it first-hand). It's a pretty simple - yet powerful - editor that lets you pick from a huge variety of options to spray down an interesting track. You can deform terrain to create interesting landscapes, position buildings and trees and various other obstacles (including camels), and even set the sun in the sky to provide you with the right sort of lighting. You can throw in weapons, ramps, speed-up points - everything you'd expect in this sort of game.
So after all this creationism, we finally got a chance to see how the game felt to play. It looks and feels very much like a Mario Kart affair - if you're into that, then you'll probably feel right at home with this. It's got a lot of similar elements, including weapons that you pick up and knock your competitors around with.
As you're whizzing around the track, you can also get bonus points for doing certain moves, such as drifts or big jumps. These points all accumulate as a booster option, which you can fire to give you a burst of speed when it's most needed.
Visually the build we saw looked very cool - the lighting and tile blending shown in the editor was very impressive, all happening almost in real-time across the entire map. There were a few graphical glitches but it seems safe to expect these to be ironed out as the game approached completion for its launch in 2010. We also found a couple of bugs in our created map where our kart ended up driving below the map, so I feel like we contributed to the development while we were playing the game.
The value of this game looks to be clearly in how customisable it is, and Sony are pushing this aspect of it heavily, making sure potential gamers know that once you've got it you can do different things with it every time and really get mileage (driving pun intended) out of it. The core element of the game for me though would always be the driving, and while the bash I got was quite fun, I'd want a bit more time with it to see if it had enough depth to keep my attention. If you're a PS3 owner though and looking for a Mario Kart-esque experience to occupy your time and to impress your friends with dazzling creations, then keep an eye out for this one.
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