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An Hour With ModNation Racers Beta
What do we think of the next play-create-share experience?
Written by Jon Seddon, 23 January 2010
Europe finally got a chance to take part in the public beta of Sony's next big social media experiment this week, when 100,000 lucky PlayStation Network users got a chance to download it. For everyone that missed out, we've done a roundup of what you'll be getting and why it might be worth a look when it's released later this year.
Shots from the ModNation Racers betaThe game starts with you in the Mod Spot hub, which is a little bit like Home, only you drive around in your kart, which invites people to play bumper cars whilst you sit there deciding which area you want to visit. This hub space supports both text and voice chat, which is a step up from Home that removed voice chat early in it's beta. You can instantly challenge anyone here, but it wasn't obvious how to actually go from accepting a challenge to racing them.
From the Mod Spot you have two basic options; either racing or creating and from each of those there are further options. Driving into the race area allows you to enter an on-line race, take part in a time trial, play a split-screen race or start a career, although the latter two options aren't available in the beta. The other main area is the Creation Station, which has a number of different things to see and do. As well as the creation it also provides many other community features such as viewing the best avatars, karts and tracks. Ominously, there's a shop you can visit, highlighting the opportunity for Sony to extract more money from us with an inevitable list of micro transactions. The doors to the shop are shuttered for the minute, so how much a new set of tyres will cost is a mystery.
P3Zine Issue 31
For our latest ModNation Racers coverage, click here to download P3Zine Issue 31 for free.If you jump into an on-line race you get a game that plays a little somewhere between Mario Kart and Wipout; faster then the first and slower than the second. Handling at this stage feels a little too sensitive making it all too easy to run your kart into a wall, but with a tough learning curve it's sure to reward those that put the effort in. Graphically it certainly looks the part with a very clean, but cartoon like style with impressive lighting, especially if the sun is riding low in the sky. All the usual staples of kart racing are present, with the collectible power ups and power slides making things more chaotic than a serious sim is ever going to be. The joy of going from 8th to 1st with one lucky move is present and correct, ensuring that the heart break of losing 7 places in the last bend is also possible.
Overall, it feels like with a little tweaking of the controls and possibly the collectibles the game will offer PS3 owners something they have been denied up until now. If it was just racing though, the game may well have some competition from Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing, which is being developed by Sumo Digital. Their record on racers and using Sega's IP means it stands every chance of being a decent kart racer.
ModNation Racers though has all of the creation tools up it's sleeve, which distinguishes it from Sega's game and previous racing games. Yes, Racing Destruction Set on the commodore 64 did enable you to create courses 25 years ago, but it was not an easy endeavour. Once you start using the tools in this game, it's obvious that Sony have provided a really simple tool set that has enough power to let you create some very impressive results in just a few minutes. Not only that, but you can do as much or as little of the creation as you want with short cuts all the way along the process. For example, once you've put down some track, you can just ask the power of your PS3 to creatively add some track scenery, which you can then modify tree by tree if you so desire. You might not make the most stunning courses in the world by taking those creative short cuts, but you can easily get something up and running and from that you'll get ideas about what works and what doesn't work. Once you start getting the hang of things you can then start to add your own short cuts and alternative routes, giving your courses that professional touch. What wasn't apparent was whether changing features like the track surface had any impact on the handling, which it should, otherwise why not just have a fully tarmac lap.
As well as the tracks, you can also spend hours creating your own avatars and karts, but this has been done many times before and possibly to greater effect in games like Forza. Whilst you are given many different constituent parts for your karts, again it's not clear whether any particular modifications give any advantage. The trickiest part of this game will be balancing all of those different combinations, but if all vehicles behave identically on all surfaces then it will surely remove some of the point of being creative and creating a fleet of vehicles.
With potentially many months remaining till launch, there is plenty of time for all of those things to be added to the game, but from what we can see so far, it looks like we might get a decent kart racer with a better meeting space than Home and easier construction tools than Little Big Planet. That could lead to a very lively and exciting community. Imagine meeting up with your friends for a few laps of ModNation Racers before entering the serious world of MAG, using the ModSpot to plan your strategies.
ModNation Racers coverage available in P3Zine Issue 31 - click here to download it for free!
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