GDC 2010: Hands-on Preview: ModNation Racers - Preview
by Nick Pantazis , posted on 12 March 2010 / 4,840 Views
It's been a big GDC for Sony with the unveiling of the Move games, but their most enjoyable stuff on display was announced a long time ago. One of the developers of this quirky and creative racer gave us a lengthy private hands-on demo. The coined phrase for this genre of social multiplayer games that Sony has been pushing is "play, create, share." To get a good idea of how well ModNation Racers functions, I think it's easiest to break it down in those categories, but in a slightly different order.
So we begin with create. If you've played the beta of ModNation Racers then you already know there are a near-infinite number of possible combinations in the beta alone. Amazingly, the simple tools in the beta which have spawned so much creative content are only about 15% of the total creation options, items, and objects available in the final version. We were shown a near-final build of the game, which had 48 skins, 247 eyes, 10 ears, 48 car bodies, and, well, you get the idea. In vehicles there are a wide variety of bodies (48 in this build), suspensions, attachments, spoilers, engines, seats, wheels, tires, and decals, as well as tools to color and create your own designs. Alll of these can be mixed and matched. I'm not going to detail the amount of everything, but not only will you find an incredible variety of customization pieces, but also an amazing set of tools for adjusting them.
As a person who dables in graphic design myself, I can tell you that the options to create are endless, and only limited by the creativity of the player. In addition to the standard pre-made items, all assortments of shapes can be attached, adjusted, stretched, rotated, cut, layered, fused, and warped in whatever way you wish. Similar to photoshop, everything that's added on the Mod can be placed on in layers, and interacted with in layers. In fact, the tools you have been given in ModNation are extremelly similar to a 3D version of a vector graphics editor. They are very user friendly, but people who know graphic design will find themselves untethered and free to create asstounding things.
As fun as creating a kart is, creating a level may be even more entertaining. The easiest place to start is of course with a road. While painting roads you use one analog stick to determine direction and another to determine elevation. Roads which cross each other automatically form a raised bridge, to keep players from accidentally breaking their tracks. Once you've drawn your ideal track, if you want you can have the game do the rest. Simply hit auto-populate and a themed set of hazards, environments, upgardes, and boosts will be instantly populated into your track and you're ready to race. Of course, you can also edit these auto-populated things as well.
Every single tree, clump of grass, rock, feature, building, elevation, fence, and object can be edited at will. There are 4 different themes (in the current build) and over 100 props per theme. Stretch, shrink, raise, place; do whatever you want to make the props unique to your track. Adjust the sun to change the lighting direction and time of day. We also saw some fun new customization as we created our track, such as a tunnel builder, which can automatically turn any stretch of road into a tunnel. My personal favorite item was a shoot switch, which when shot can be set to interact with something else in the level. In our track the switch raised and lowered a wall covering a shortcut, but the switch can be set to operate a wide variety of things in the level. You can actually set a switch on one side of the level to adjust something on the opposite side. I am already plotting evil uses of this.
Of course there's no point in creating if you don't share. Sharing in ModNation is easy and effective. Everytime you pop-in ModNation and play online you're dropped in a small lobby area in which you can freely explore, chat with, and challenge other players. There are 24 players per area, and you can select and transfer to an area with your friends at any time. Top voted Mods and karts are displayed on podiums for all to see and download, and you can easily hop into editing, sharing, or racing through simple menus. In the online sharing center you'll find a variety of robust sorting tools and searches which will let you find whatever you want. The developer told me there were more than 100,000 creations on the network within a month of starting the beta, so rest assured there will be more creations than you can possibly try.
And last, but certainly not least, we reach play. All this customization stuff is great, but it would be meaningless if it didn't play well. Luckily for you, ModNation may have some of the tightest racing gameplay in the kart racing genre. The expected features are present; items, boosts, and drifts, but what makes ModNation feel special is really the physics. ModNation uses modern car racing physics which ads an entirely new dimension to the gameplay. This means you can, for example, execute jumps which do not have a preset distance and direction (though you can add those as well in the create features). With ModNation's real physics and almost ludicrous amount of creation options the game can truly be whatever you want it to be. Of course, 4-player splitscreen is included in addition to online play of up to 8 players.
With tight controls and great gameplay, this may be the evolution the kart racing genre is waiting for. Look for a full VGChartz review later this year.
