ModNation Racers

 

Year: 2010

Developer: United Front Games

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Platform: PS3

Metacritic score: 82

VGChartz sales to date: 1 million 

WHAT MADE IT GREAT
Kart racers are great games because they combine the thrill of competitive racing with the hilarity that ensues from blasting your friends with crazy weapons.  It's a testament to the genre's staying power that a spin-off series like Mario Kart can find success across so many console and arcade releases  That level of greatness takes a careful mix of control and chaos but a healthy dose of speed helps too.  In a lot of ways ModNation Racers nails the combination but what puts the game over the top is the crazy degree of customization.  The multiplayer portion of the game is where you can build custom tracks, karts and racers and share them with other players online.  You can race against up to 12 others using your creations or you can download from thousands of options already online.  Just about any character, car or theme you can think of already exists in dozens of variations.  This social aspect of the game has earned it many comparisons to Media Molecule's 2008 PS3 exclusive LittleBigPlanet, and true to form ModNation Racers is a game that doesn't fully come to life until you've explored the ability to create and share with others online.

It's-a me, Nintendo's legal department!  This is-a DMCA take-a down notice.

The career/story mode is probably where most people will first dip their toes into the water.  The story follows an up-and-coming racer named Tag trying to break into the Modnation Racing Championships, or MRC.  You'll compete in a series of race circuits, each one consisting of multiple events at a number of different tracks.  The track designs in the career mode are top notch with the right mix of zany obstacles, shortcuts and jumps without being too confusing to follow.  There are weapon pickups scattered around each track which will randomly give you one of four weapon types: speed boost, missiles, electricity or sonic waves.  Each weapon type has three levels and driving over successive pickups will increase the level whatever weapon you currently hold.  Every stage of every weapon also has two firing modes, either front-fire or laying it down behind you like a mine, so there's plenty of variety in the mayhem being dished out all around you.  Luckily you've got a full arsenal of offensive and defensive tactics to get you to the finish line alive, most of which make use of the boost gauge you fill by pulling off tricks, drifting or performing other actions.  The boost gauge determines how long you can use your kart's turbo boost but it can also be used up performing other actions.  In addition to the weapons above, you can also use a little boost to sideswipe opponents riding alongside you by flicking the right analog stick.  One of the most critical actions you can use boost for it triggering a shield that will briefly protect you from any oncoming attack.  A warning system lets you know when someone is targeting you but you'll need quick timing to make sure you pop your shield just before getting hit or it won't do much good. 

Better hope you didn't pop that shield too early, or those missiles are gonna hurt

To move onto the next race you've got to finish in the top three, but if you complete all three objectives on each track you open a grudge match challenge against that tracks local lap leader.  There are also five hidden tokens on each track waiting to be collected which can then be exchanged to unlock new items to trick out your character, kart or tracks in the Mod Spot.  Since most tracks have multiple routes which can sometimes be hidden the tokens encourage you to explore a new course each lap and can lead you to discovering useful shortcuts.  Clearing every track objective while picking up the tokens and still taking 1st can be extremely challenging, so thankfully you don't have to do everything in a single race, but it certainly adds to your bragging rights.  This game is no pushover, the AI of your opponents is based on your own performance, so if you're having a lightning lap it means everyone else likely is too.  This helps prevent blow-out wins regardless of your individual skill level, but it can also make come from behind wins hard to pull off.  Throughout the race your pit boss will chime in with helpful information, and there's also biting commentary from race announcers Biff and Gary before and after the flags come out. 

Once you've mastered the basics in career mode it's time to enter the Mod Spot.  This is an open online lobby where you can drive around to various game modes such as single player or online races, the garage where you can create and modify content, and areas where you can view top created content, view lap leaders for the ever-changing Hot Lap competitions and much more.  If you're just looking to hop into some races it's as easy as driving through the right gateway, but you can also host matches if you have specific tracks you want to play.  As with any game with such a heavy online component, your mileage will vary in your interactions with others and the quality of the user-created tracks.  Most tracks are just as polished as the ones created by United Front Games, and there's plenty of examples that completely outdo what the developers included in the box.  You will come across maps that are confusing, unfinished or downright annoying in their design but the robust community review system makes it easy to filter out the chaff.  Once you find a rotation you like, it's easy to keep your tires hot by seamlessly re-joining the same lobby to wait for the next race and even in it's third year ModNation has plenty of others waiting to play any time of day.  Connection issues or waiting to join a race is something you will very rarely experience.  It's also fun just to see what characters and karts other players are using, and with text, voice and gesture based chat you can always share with someone when you find a design you like.  You can easily spend dozens of hours in the Mod Spot just designing or modifying user-created content and watching one of your creations rack up hundreds of downloads can be even more rewarding than dominating in the races.  For those who lack the patience to design content yourself it's great being able to search through the vast existing catalog of creations to find exactly what you want.  By creating a shared space where players can create content, join races or just mill about and socialize the game takes on a life of it's own.

The robust track editor let's you whip up tracks as wild as your imagine will allow and includes a dizzying array of details to play with.  It's easy to spend so much time constructing a city for your track to go through that you forget to make the track.

WHAT WENT WRONG
Leaving all the creativity up to the player makes for a bland experience right out of the box.  Having an intricately detailed and massive focus on user-generated content helps give your game staying power, but you still need an enticing style and design straight from the developer to draw players into your world.  While I'm sure the mostly blank canvas design was an intentional decision by the developers to encourage people to add their own creations, it nevertheless makes the series blend into the background.  The game did a lot to earn it's comparison to LittleBigPlanet, right down to squishing together separate words in the title while still capitalizing each one.  But Media Molecule injected an immense amount of style and feeling into their homemade arts and crafts setting whereas ModNation feels much more generic.  The characters in the story are mostly boring designs, with the biggest offender being the mostly silent protagonist Tag.  Thankfully you can use your own characters or karts even in the career mode so you're not stuck with bland Tag and his plain black kart the whole time, but it's still hard to engage with the story when all the characters in it are about as stimulating as soggy cardboard.

Didn't I see these guys in a Wii Sports game?  Wait, no, I think they're Xbox Live avatars.

This inability to stand out in a crowd despite the game's unique approach was especially disastrous because of the unusually large number of releases in the racing genre during it's launch window.  Two other racing combat games, Blur (from the studio behind Project Gotham Racing) and Split/Second: Velocity both released the same month.  Both these games offered up photo-realistic graphics that contrasted sharply with ModNation's cartoon style.  If that wasn't enough, the series that defines the racing genre more then any other made it's first major release of the generation when Gran Turismo 5 came out later that year.  These games likely drew away most of the die-hard race fans who opt for realism over karting, but who may have otherwise gotten into the ModNation community if there hadn't been so many alternatives.  ModNation couldn't even boast of being the only kart-racer released that year since Sonic & Sega Al-Stars Racing beat it to shelves by a couple months.  Reviews were overwhelmingly positive though the long load times were criticized and some felt the dynamic difficulty balancing was too aggressive, which can be especially punishing when getting hit downgrades or removes your current weapon leaving you helpless to retaliate.  Sales were good enough to justify releasing later versions on handheld systems, but it was obvious that a simultaneous release of multiple games in the same genre in the same week hurt sales for each of those games.  While LBP had sold 3 million copies by its second year (having themselves suffered from a competitive release schedule) ModNation is closing out its 3rd year and sales have petered out around a million behind that benchmark.  

WILL WE SEE IT AGAIN
Yes and no.  Even though most gamers let this one pass them by, ModNation Racers found enough success to see continued releases on PSP and PS Vita.  The game is a The PS Vita version even supports limited Cross-Play with the PS3, allowing you to share created content across platforms (but sadly not race head to head).  As for a true sequel to the game, well that's kind of a tricky proposition.  You see, when ModNation Racers came out in 2010 a lot of reviewers described it as LittleBigPlanet meets kart racing.  But then in November 2012 Sony released an actual LBP karting game called, fittingly enough, LittleBigPlanet Karting.  Media Molecule actually shared development of that game with...United Front Gaming.  No, seriously.  

It's not very often that two competing developers collaborate on a game that is directly positioned against each of their own flagship products.  Sure Nintendo and Sega are happy to pair up Mario and Sonic every now and then, but it's usually some bizarre spin-off that ends up demeaning them both.  In this case however, both developers got to do what they do best, with United Front Gaming providing the karting mechanics beneath LBP's unique style.  While it's a great karting game, it doesn't feel like a true follow-up to ModNation because no matter how creative you are, everything you make still has that homemade LittleBigPlanet feel.  Even though ModNation wasn't as interesting up front, it was like a lump of clay that can be molded into something so beautiful you forget what it looked like at the start.  There's still hope for a return since even as LBP Karting was in development United Front Gaming was releasing ModNation Racers: Road Trip for PS Vita. Hopefully they'll wave the green flag on development of a sequel soon, because racing endless variations of characters and karts around millions of original tracks can't stay this fun forever, can it?

Gentlemen, start your copyright infringing

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SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs

Year: 2003

Developer: Zipper Interactive

Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Platform: PS2

Metacritic score: 87

VGAChartz sales to date: 2.94 million 

WHAT MADE IT GREAT

Unless you're prepared to go through Hell Week, Socom II is the closest you'll ever come to being a Navy SEAL (fun fact: except for the word 'Navy' the full title is entirely made of acronyms, anyone know what they stand for?).  This 3rd-person tactical shooter puts you in the boots of a SEAL team leader and challenges you with shutting down an Albanian weapons smuggling syndicate, ending an armed revolution in Brazil, disrupting a coup in Algeria and preventing a rogue nuclear attack on the U.S. by a Russian terrorist group.  All in a day's work for the most elite special forces soldiers the world has ever seen.  Thankfully, you'll be backed up by a capable fire team whose intelligent AI does justice to the discipline of real-life SEALs.  The game strives to be true to life at every turn and received extensive input from Naval Special Warfare Command (the U.S. Navy even earned developer credits for their effort).

Sandstorm tasks the SEALs with infiltrating a desert terrorist compound and blowing up a communications setup.  Use the load screen briefing to study the map and plan your attack or defense.  

The lengthy single-player campaign consists of 12 missions spanning four distinct deployments, each drawn from the types of conflicts SEALs actually engage in.  Before each mission you'll arm yourself with primary and secondary weapons based on real-world armaments (though some have altered names for legal reasons) and up to three tactical items such as scopes, silencers or grenades.  Success is entirely dependent upon how well you can use the elements of stealth, surprise and tactical firepower to lead your fireteam to achieve the mission.  Your three AI teammates can be controlled through voice commands to perform such actions as follow waypoints, take cover, silently take down individual targets or breach and clear rooms.  Your team's ability to engage the enemy using tactical force to overcome superior numbers will determine whether you can complete the primary, secondary and hidden objectives in each mission.  Accomplishing these will often provide intel or other advantages in further missions.  

While Jester kicks in the door, use voice commands to order fireteam bravo to deploy a flashbang allowing you to take out the target without killing the hostage.

While the single-player portion of the game is truly excellent, it's the multiplayer that kept players coming back right up until the servers were shut down in August 2012 (more on that later).  Using the PS2 Network Adapter and the bundled headset you could play online in 8v8 matches of elimination, demolition, breaching an enemy compound and rescuing hostages or protecting VIPs from assassination.  The game plays much like Counter-Stike in that death comes quickly and the penalty is sitting out until the round ends.  There is an extensive armory of smg's, assault rifles, pistols, shotguns and sniper rifles along with a full compliment of grenades and other tactical items.  Gear, including unlockable skins, can all be adjusted in between rounds or scavenged from dead players during a match.  With 22 different maps across a variety of terrains, each with a unique layout requiring different tactics, there were ample opportunities to experiment with the huge inventory.  The dedicated servers, voice chat, ranked lobbies and robust clan systems made it a favorite among competitive gamers and a close-knit clan community developed around the heavily team-based combat.  This is an online experience just as Earth-shatteringly good as Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty 4 or the aforementioned Counter-Strike.  

Use C4 to infiltrate the compound while evading enemy fire.  Plant and defend the bomb to take out the comms room and end the airstrike threat.

WHAT WENT WRONG

So why didn't Socom II spawn an endless series of sequels and imitators like those games did?  Critics raved about the multiplayer and declared graphics, gameplay and controls to be major improvements on the already strong first title.  While the sequel didn't manage to sell as many copies, it still lands just outside the top 50 best-selling PS2 games and created a loyal following that still begs for a true sequel nearly a decade later.  This is a rare instance when neither positive critical reception, a dedicated fanbase or even successful sales were enough to stave off consignment to the dustbin of history.  What the hell went wrong?

Online loadoats could be detailed from camo style to voice type and switched up between matches to take into account the terrain type.  Weapon and gear profiles could also be saved but those could be switched up between each round to adjust strategy on the fly.

While the game did sell, an additional headset, network adapter and broadband connection were required to experience the phenomenal multiplayer and get the most out of the game.  Online gaming was old hat to the PC crowd, but on consoles the concept was still in it's infancy.  The Socom series was one of the first to offer online play and in the absence of Xbox Live or PSN backbones Zipper used the PC model of lobbies and dedicated servers.  This fostered a vibrant clan community that encouraged long-term play but could also be intimidating to newcomers.  Players in ranked servers expected their teammates to know what they're doing, so it was wise to learn the ropes in the unranked respawn lobbies first.  The focus on tactical gameplay may also have given it primarily niche appeal, but regenerative health and rapidfire respawns weren't yet mandatory in all shooters so this may not have hurt too badly.

Extraction was one of many unique multiplayer modes that demanded close teamwork to lead the hostages to a heli pickup as the SEALs or prevent their escape as the terrorists.

The next outing on the PS2, Socom 3 was released towards the end of the systems lifecycle and despite earning similar reviews fell quite short of sales expectations.  Most criticism centered around the graphics which failed to keep pace as the console aged, but the fanbase particularly disliked the inclusion of vehicles into combat.  While the huge variety of vehicles was fun to pilot, they had a major impact on the feel of multiplayer.  The use of vehicles allowed for much more expansive maps and played more life Battlefield in addition to the smaller, more tactical encounters the series was known for.  Many within the existing community found the new gameplay out of place and felt the wide open maps and increased 32-player games exposed weaknesses in the game's draw distance and frame rates.  A significant number of players opted to continue playing Socom II right up until Zipper's closure forced the servers to go dark at the end of August 2012.  Zipper released one final Socom for PS2, the middling Combined Assault, along with a handful of releases for the PSP which were better received, but none could recapture the appeal or commercial success of the first two titles. 

Whether by land, air or sea no place in the world is inaccessible to a Navy SEAL.  But when it comes to use of force they prefer the tactical advantage of small arms to the overwhelming force of vehicular combat, and gamers expected the action to reflect that.

WHAT IF IT RELEASED TODAY
The Socom series made two appearances during the current console generation, but only one was handled by Zipper themselves.  Shortly after Zipper was bought out by SCE to become an in-house studio for Sony the Socom brand was handed off to developer Slant Six.  There efforts on the PSP titles were viewed positively by critics and fans, and when it was announced the first PS3 release would be heavily based around the formula set by Socom II the internet exploded with cautious optimism that we were finally getting the much-desired true sequel to Socom II.  In many ways Confrontation delivered on this promise by offering the same team-based, tactical combat the series was known for in a presentation highly similar to Socom II, right down to the layout of the HUD-display. 
But numerous technical flaws and network glitches triggered an intensely negative reaction from gamers and reviewers unable to play the game.  Without a single-player campaign, there was nothing players could do except loudly complain on every Socom message board across the internet.  Once players could finally get online they found persistent lag, unstable frame rates, numerous missing features that were listed on the box (including the critical support for clans) and a cornucopia of gameplay bugs.  Slant Six struggled to release a series of patches over the next few months and the game eventually came closer to fulfilling it's promises, but the damage was done and sales never recovered.

The inclusion of fan favorite maps like Frostfire and Crossroads (above) in Confrontation were much appreciated, but couldn't offset how rapidly stale things felt with only 7 maps to choose from.

Zipper made one final attempt with Socom 4, this time developing the game themselves and determined to incorporate lessons from newer online shooters.  The graphics were given a visual update, a story driven single-player campaign was added and there was a much greater emphasis on action over stealth and planning.  But once again PSN network failures prevented players from getting online during launch week, this time due to the infamous PSN hack starting on 4/20/11.  Despite the low bar set by Confrontation, Socom 4 still managed to disappoint with it's cheesy single-player campaign, poor controls and new focus on run-n-gun combat.  It was pretty clear that Zipper had tried (and fell well short) of aping the Call of Duty formula, losing any meaningful connection to the Socom series in the process in much the same way Socom 3 had done.  When considered alongside the lack of a lobby system, poor voice chat, and limited clan support many within the existing Socom community felt betrayed by what they viewed as shallow appeals to the casual gaming crowd.  Once more they dug in their heels and decided to stick with Socom II despite being over 8 years old at this point.


The underwhelming response to Socom 4, coming on the heels of poor sales by Zipper's online 1st-person shooter MAG, spelled doom for the studio and Sony announced their closure in March 2012.  This also meant the dedicated servers for Socom II which Zipper had continued to operate would finally be shut down.  Anyone looking to scratch their itch for tactical online combat must now turn to Confrontation, which is thankfully much improved since it's very rocky launch.  With Zipper shuttered and no Socom projects anywhere on Slant Six's horizon the future looks pretty grim for this once-great series.  If Sony ever does hand this franchise off to someone knew, there is a sizable fanbase always hungry for more with still-active communities begging for an HD port of Socom II.  Looking at the 1st-person action shooters popular on Xbox Live and PSN, it's easy to see why a so many gamers interested in teamwork, strategy and tactics feel left out in the cold.  Once you've spent time playing as the most disciplined, most professional, most highly-trained special forces soldiers on the planet, everything else just seems like child's play. 

We're serious Sony, give us a proper Socom or this will be one hostage not even Liam Neeson can rescue

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