BitSnark

Little Big Planet was a key milestone in a number of aspects. Chief among those was its relentless pursuit of individual creativity that it demanded from the player. With ModNation Racers, it would appear that United Front Games have taken this design ideology kicking and screaming into the kart racing genre.

At its heart, ModNation Racers is pretty standard stuff; it’s a cartoon style kart racing game whereby you have to reach first position using all kinds of power-ups such as rockets, machine guns, turbo boosts and many more besides, but where the game promises to excel is in the aforementioned wide-ranging customisation that it will allow it’s users to achieve.

Boasting a similar system to LBP, players are able to customise their racers and their karts in a number of different ways, making use of pre-determined parts and downloadable content. Where the customisation aspect really comes into its own in ModNation Racer, is in regard to what gamers are able to do with the tracks and surrounding environments.

The actual track creation is done in real time with the track being procedurally generated behind the car in a 3D fly through of sorts. The process was so fast that a very basic track was able to be created in ten or so seconds.

In addition to this, many other things may be tweaked and customised. The track surface itself may be changed with ice, snow, sand and standard gravel options as well as the incline of hills and troughs of dips. You can also mess about with the weather too; dictating where the sun will rise and fall and also weather effects such as wind, rain and snow.

The fact that it boasts customisation options deeper than any Kart racer on the market would be somewhat moot if you couldn’t let other people see your wonderful, inspiring creations. Well thankfully you can, as just like LBP, there is a solid emphasis on uploading the fruits of your labour for others to enjoy and vice-versa.

No price or specific release date was announced for ModNation Racer other than ‘sometime in 2010’.

Looks quite promising.