Once the expo floor opened on March 11th people swarmed in to check out all the booths and pick up some swag. Amongst the chaos I came across a demo of ModNation Racers. I made my way through the cluster of bodies and sat down with the game. I picked up the controller and started driving since the previous player had left mid race. The controls were easy to pick up without any prior time with the game which created an easily accessible and entertaining game. If LittleBigPlanet and Mario Kart had a child this would be their offspring.
After a couple laps getting used to the drifting and aiming for item pickups I wandered into the editing options menu. Just like the racing mechanics the editor was easy to navigate and in no time I was adding houses, blimps, street signs, and even donkeys. All of these items could be manipulated by the player to fit whatever look they were going for. For me this consisted of creating a road block of donkeys while making one of them the size of a small skyscraper. The options and level of creativity are only limited by the player’s imagination.
Although racing on someone else’s track was entertaining I wanted to race on something of my own design. I jumped into the track editor and my character was put into an asphalt paver. The player gets to operate the machine and drive it in any direction laying the track as they go. The player can make their racetrack as crazy or simplistic as they want. The game also has a ghost track in front of the paver which gives player’s the option to hold X and the track will auto-complete connecting both ends of whatever has been constructed so far. As said before you are able to fill in the surrounding environment or the track itself with various objects, but their is another course that can be taken for those in a rush to start racing right away. There is an auto populate feature which will add the scenery to your track for you. This includes: trees, houses, speed/road signs, item pickups, start/finish line, boosts, etc. This will save a lot of time for those who do not feel like controlling every aspect of the track’s design.
The track I created was small and overall not too complicated, but this did not stop me from racing around it numerous times. I even lost track of time as the simplistic but addicting gameplay drew me in. I finally made myself stop and checked out the main lobby of the game where character and car creation took place. I have taken the liberty of getting counts on certain tools that are available in the game so far. They are as follows:
Car Options
Bodies: 8 styles – Muscles, Exotic, Vintage, Race, Offroad, Tuner, Concept, Silly
Color Schemes/Paint Jobs: 41 types
Stickers: 5 categories with a total of 544 stickers
Parts: 23 engines, 14 suspension options, 42 wheels, 23 seats, 20 steering wheels totaling 122 parts
There were also other accessories that could be put on your car (ex: skull, fishing pole, stars) in different locations.
Racer Options
Skins: 49 patterns (ex: urban camouflage, blood splatter, bubbles)
Clothing: There were many clothing options which consisted of hats, shirts, masks, pants, and other various items such as horns.
At this point in time it is unsure whether these are the final counts for the respective category. The game is shaping up to be just as successful as LittleBigPlanet with the same amount of customization and the signature addictive style. Be sure to come back and keep up on ModNation Racers as it continues to divulge more information.
