![]() After that, you can even try changing the weather by hand, like an insane aunt of mine used to, except here it actually works and nobody pops out of the bushes to tranq you. Modding the terrain sees you squashing earth down on the front touchscreen and pushing it up with the rear, which is such a cool idea you won't really mind a little brain-lag as you get used to it. Banking and adding height to your track is done with a funny little tool that you steer down the road by swiping the Vita's rear touchscreen and then operate by swiping the front, while props are pulled out of menus and placed with a jab of the finger as you rove around with the left stick. That said, ModNation's decorating isn't that much trickier if you want to do it yourself. You can add shortcuts to any of your home-made tracks with a quick swipe of the finger. It's a little like being rich and drinking lemonade as somebody else does your gardening and fiddles your accounts for you - but in a really cool, cinematic way. There's something extremely satisfying about watching as the camera whizzes down the track, adding elements in entirely sensible positions. ModNation's auto-population system is still fundamentally amazing. ![]() After that, you can either auto-populate your track with weapon-drops, scenery, speed ramps and the like, or you can do it all by hand. It's a multi-stage process and you start by selecting a basic theme - Big City, Ice World, Jungle, Multi-Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis - and then tracing a layout onto the screen. This is all designed with the same focus on simplicity. How about the track editor, though? Well, I'm glad I pretended that you asked me that. Character textures are one way in which this Vita game really stands out from the PSP incarnation, incidentally: they look really great here, giving the game a much-needed tangibility. When it comes to mods - the series' vinyl-toy avatars - it's much the same business, except instead of adding tires, you're throwing on a walrus moustache and some spooky eyes. You'll find yourself pressing it for hours. Every race tends to shower you with new stuff to throw on your vehicle, and there's a randomise option that is almost as good as LBP's randomise character button. So, when making your own karts, it's easy to select spoilers, engines, bodies and all that stuff, and it's even easier to add and reposition various decorative pieces like buzz saws and lollipop aerials. Certainly, the Vita's 5-inch OLED looks a little cramped for the first time when you fill it with a few of the game's production menus, but you're also now allowed to control things with taps and swipes of your finger. How comfortable? Let's find out - and let's start with a look at the creation stuff, as that side of things should theoretically be most compromised by the shift to a smaller screen. Tokens collected in races allow you to score new props in an in-game lottery. Maybe that's why it seems so comfortable on the Vita. You can spend a lot longer tinkering with the specifics if you want - just as you can spend a lot longer crafting your own kart or mod character from the various parts you've unlocked playing the campaign - but it's a system that's largely been designed around breezy immediacy. Sketch a track, mess with the elevations, and sprinkle it with yapping penguins: it's done in five minutes. ModNation just wants you to make something. LittleBigPlanet wants you to make exactly what's in your head, even though doing that is likely to be fiddly and annoying (and, if it's my head we're talking about, it will be filled with stray tumbleweeds and set to the distant toll of a sad, rusty bell). ModNation is built around user-generated content, but it takes an entirely different approach to that offered by Media Molecule. The whole LittleBigPlanet thing is a bit misleading, though. It's borrowed almost all of its best ideas, perhaps, but it's a very entertaining homage. Sony's jouncing, knockabout title flings it players around hairpin tracks where they're free to collect weapons (although, in a WipEout-ish twist, they can now convert them into boost), tackle crazy jumps, zip through giant Tiki Skulls and even pick up a tiny, crucial jolt of nitro at the very beginning of a race if they can start their engines at just the right moment. Well, the Mario Kart bit is certainly true. The shorthand for ModNation Racers has always been Mario Kart meets LittleBigPlanet.
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