Sony and Media Molecule struck gold when LittleBigPlanet was released more than a year ago. Now, Sony is looking to United Front Games to produce a game that shares the ideals of “Play, Create, Share.” With nearly three years in development, ModNation Racers isn’t exactly stealing anything from LittleBigPlanet; instead, it’s following the principles that Sony believes is the wave of the future – gamers want to take an active role in creating and sharing the games they play.
With that principle in mind, a kart-racing game where players can easily create their own tracks and customize their racer fits perfectly in the “Play, Create, Share,” campaign. We recently had a chance to chat with Dan Sochan, a producer at United Front Games, about what we can expect when the game is released in May.
Level Creation
Perhaps the biggest attraction to ModNation Racers is the ability to build your own tracks. But, if you’ve spent any amount of time with LittleBigPlanet’s level creator, you know it can take a while to make a level that plays and looks great. Sochan tells us that we shouldn’t expect the same thing in ModNation Racers’ level builder.
He says the development team created the level creator tool with two mantras in mind. “We make videogames for a living. We want other people to play, not work and build levels.”
This means that the team wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to jump in and quickly build and alter a track. Certain tools, like the paint-out feature, allows players to simply paint over a road surface to change it from cobblestone to dirt with just a click of a button.
“Our other mantra: we wanted anyone to be able to build a track quickly and easily that they can be proud of and that feels unique to them,” he says. “There is nothing we are doing on our end that the end user can’t do.”
You’ll use basic controls to build the track, move the ground, build mountains, or create lakes. The auto-populate feature essentially puts all the details of a full course at one click of the button. This feature puts down trees, rocks, houses, boost pads, and obstacles. All of these objects can then be moved. It should be noted that you do not need to use the auto-populate tool if you want to add all the details yourself. You can also change things like the intensity of the sun, the wind speed, even clumps of grass.
“In less than five minutes you can have a track that is done, unique, and verified that it is ready to go,” he says.
Game Modes
ModNation Racers will have plenty of different game modes to keep all gamers’ interests piqued. The game modes include a career mode, which is a light and funny story that explains why the game’s characters are there, and why they are building all these tracks.
The Time Trial mode is available online and offline. It saves your best track time, and when online, it saves your time compared to the global test times. When played online, you can watch a ghost character of the best racer for that particular track. This allows you to see the exact path they took and how they drifted to get the fastest time.
Hot Lap features a single track per day and allows for everyone to compete for the best time. A statue in the middle of the track represents the player with the current best time on that particular track.
“In public beta we saw people play 30-40 races, and some play 600 or more,” Sochan says. “These people will always be at the top. Hot Lap gives anyone the opportunity for that day.”
Tracks will include user-generate levels, and a Hot Lap can be raced as many times as desired for each given day.
The game’s hub, Mod Spot, puts players that are geographically close to you, friends, and racers with similar levels, together in one spot. You’ll be surrounded by 23 other players who you can challenge to race, check out their profile, or comment on their tracks. The Mod Spot will have reserved spaces for eight statues to celebrate what characters are doing. You’ll see the top 3 rated tracks, top 3 karts, and best Hot Lap.
Move Support
Sochan says the team is certainly interested in working with Sony to implement PlayStation Move support. The game will launch without Move support (since the motion controller isn’t due out until fall), but the team is already thinking about how it can be incorporated.
“It is something we plan to do in the future,” he says. “There’s a lot of cool stuff we can see. When we are sculpting the terrain, we can use the Move to pull up mountains or smooth them out, or even carve out lakes. The same would apply when you are stylizing your karts – you can literally paint spray your car.”
DLC and Add-ons
You probably heard that pre-order bonuses for the game include special characters and karts based on Kratos, Nathan Drake, and Ratchet & Clank. Beyond that, Sochan says we can expect to see plenty of downloadable content along the way.
He says we can expect to see additions to karts, new dynamic obstacles, and new themes.
“From our side, as we put new content in the game – what amazing things are people coming up with to create next,” he says.
You will be able to alter you kart and mod, but all of these changes are purely aesthetic. Sochan says this decision was made so no one would have an advantage of disadvantage. You will be able to adjust aspects of your character through Driver Personality. This allows you to alter the levels of acceleration and top speed, and driving and handling. These changes all help make your character feel unique to your play style.