First Impressions: ModNation Racers

Meet Pinhead. He is the colourful, slightly deranged fruits of my first Modnation Racers labour. Initially built in the free demo available to all on the PSN Store, the full game of ModNation Racers recognised that I’d already used their comprehensive suite of creation tools – which in fact was only a smidgeon of what I’ve subsequently found to be available in the retail version – and imported him for immediate use. It’s a thoughtful touch that immediately casts a positive light on United Front Games’ stab at the ‘Play. Create. Share.’ mantra that LittleBigPlanet so expertly established. And , judging by the handful of hours I’ve sunk into ModNation Racers, it is a positivity that is only tempered by a few creeping doubts.

Demo Roundup: Blur & Just Cause 2

Taking a break from the many, many hours of healing stricken comrades and reviving their corpses in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 allowed me to get some hands-on time with a couple of recent preview builds. Namely a beta code for the Xbox 360 version of Blur, and the general release demo on PSN for Just Cause 2. Impressions for both are after the jump.

ModNation Racers (Closed Beta) // PS3

ModNation Racers, the upcoming PS3-exclusive racing game from United Front Games, hasn’t been on my radar at all. I’ve seen it mentioned in a few thread comments on gaming sites, on blog posts about the games that people are most looking forward to in 2010, but with racing being my least favourite genre, I hadn’t looked into any details of this at all. That all changed when I noticed this post on the EU PlayStation blog, detailing the beta for ModNation Racers and its 100,000 download limit. Caught up in the hype, I promptly booted up the PSN and commenced with the 2GB download. Several hours later, I was ready to race.