Completed Games: ModNation Racers (PS3)

Developer – United Front Games

Publisher – Sony Computer Entertainment

Release Date – May 19th 2010 (EU)

United Front Games (UFG) is a new video games development studio started in 2007 in Vancouver Canada with former members of the EA Black Box and Rockstar Vancouver. It is pretty clear that the former EA Black Box members were hired to work on ModNation Racers while ex Rockstar Vancouver members are working on the next True Crime game. In collaboration and with much support from Sony, ModNation Racer was being touted as the kart racing equivalent to Little Big Planet with a focus on user generated content. As a kart racer it is pretty close to a true modern reinventing of the stale kart racing genre dominated by Nintendo’s MarioKart. However the game has garnered a reputation of having some of the longest loading screens on modern consoles (which they have somewhat fixed or made more reasonable with subsequent patches).

Some of the features:

• Very customisable i.e top user-generated downloadable characters: mario, spiderman, monopoly guy, bender,  joker etc. Vehicles: scooby doo van, A team, ecto 1, batmobile etc.
• Graphic style compared to LBP but more kid fantasy than indie/DIY style.
• Sideswipes, shields, traps, spins, and air bonuses in addition to standard boosts, drafting and weapons.
• Single player incentives: Objectives and tokens.

Finished single player races, collected all tokens, played a bit multiplayer for a total of around 15+hrs.

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