Players can express themselves by creating their own Mod character, styling their own racing kart and even building an imaginative track that can be shared with the rest of the PlayStation community.

Welcome to the never-ending season of ModNation kart racing, where creativity rules on and off the track. Get on the starting grid of nearly 500,000 tracks available online or just race in our competitive circuit and compete with new dual analog stick racing and three new weapon classes. And with the new touch controls, you can create a new track in seconds and share it with the rest of the world. Buckle up for an endless ride!

Play puppet master in your very own ModNation universe and raise mountains by simply touching the back panel. The longer you hold your fingertips to the back panel, the higher the peaks rise. On the front panel, if you feel inclined to create a lake, simply press down until you strike water. We also demonstrated that the integrity of ModNation kart racing is still intact with the advantage of Dual Analog Sticks. With steering on the left stick, and performing stunts on the right, racing could not be more fun.

By using the online capabilities and processing power of the PS Vita, the ModNation team has made it possible for users to download any PS3 user generated creation and bring it with them on the go.

ModNation Racers: Road Trip: Online Feature

1. Competitive Localized Leaderboards
When a gamer who has opted to “Use Location Data” posts a lap time to the Leaderboards, that time is connected to their current location. Gamers can personalize their location names (i.e., My Home, My Work, Mark’s House Where I Always Win, etc.) for easy reference. These times become part of the Local Leaderboards which gamers can use to compete in a fun arcade-style atmosphere.

Gamers can also select one of their saved locations and view other competitors’ times that were earned nearby. For example, if I earn a great time on “Construction Mayhem” while at “Mark’s House,” I can check my rank versus other gamers’ local times and more importantly, my friends…including Mark. The game would find the 8, 24 or 48 closest gamers to “Mark’s House” who posted local times for “Construction Mayhem.” This means you’ll have an ever-expanding level of challenge through asynchronous competition to play instantly when and where you want!

2. Continual Match-Making, Ghosts and Time Trials
Where ModNation Racers for the PS3 automatically matches gamers against one of the most difficult lap times in the community, ModNation Racers: Road Trip instead matches you against other gamers’ Ghosts who have set times which are competitive to yours. This continual match-making and the shorter play time of a single lap competition makes for a fun and constantly challenging online gaming experience. For those of us who are competitive with our friends, we can select a filter to race against friends’ ghosts.

An option on the Vita even allows you to receive a push notification whenever your time is beat or to boast to your friends when you beat theirs—I believe I will use this feature plenty with Mark once ModNation Racers: Road Trip goes live next month.

3. Travel Points: Time For A Road Trip

The first time a gamer checks-in with Mod Explorer the game will recognize their location. Every time a gamer checks-in at any location after that they will earn Travel Points based on the distance from their last check-in. Individual gamers will then unlock additional parts for Track Studio when they reach certain amounts of Travel Points. There will also be an in-game leaderboard ranking gamers by the amount of Travel Points they have earned.

3a. Global Travel Points: Help Us Help You
Travel Points earned by every gamer are added together to form Global Travel Points. When the community of gamers reach certain distance milestone amounts of Global Travel Points everyone who uses Mod Explorer will unlock new track creation parts! This could be how world peace starts. Don’t you want to be a part of it?

4. Destination Check-ins: Better Than A Passport Stamp
Mod Explorer contains 45 featured cities across the globe–each city with three distinct destinations. When a gamer checks-in at a destination that they can find using PS Vita’s GPS functionality, they will unlock unique creation pieces to use in the creation studios.

In addition, the entire ModNation Racers: Road Trip community is further rewarded when parts associated with the destination are unlocked for the global community of gamers. For example, if you check-in at Navy Pier in Chicago, you will unlock associated parts for your use. When the predetermined threshold of player check-ins at Navy Pier has been reached, a unique part is unlocked for ALL gamers. Other parts associated with Navy Pier will be unlocked for all gamers as the number of unique player check-ins increase there.

Finally, when a gamer checks-in at a destination, they are prompted to take a picture and modify it using their Mod and Kart. This is done with ModNation Racers: Road Trip – Mod Postcards feature.

5. Ad-Hoc Play: It’s ModNation Party Time!
For those racers looking for that head-to-head experience with your friends, Ad-Hoc play is where it’s at. Up to four gamers can race simultaneously on any San Diego Studio track or choose from over 500,000 user created tracks from the ModNation Racers community. That ought to keep you busy for a millennium or so.

6. Race, Create, Publish and Download!
As you’d expect from a ModNation Racers game, you have incredibly strong creation studios literally at your fingertips to create anything in your imagination. Publish your creations for the entire community to enjoy. And if creation isn’t your thing, enjoy downloading anything published by the entire community. And to sweeten the deal, you have full backwards compatibility to download any of the over 3 million creations from ModNation Racers PS3!

Key Features

• Brand new Career mode – Get ready to take on the challenge of 20+ new tracks filled with 3 new weapon classes (Fire, Ice, Earth) for your Kart's offensive arsenal.
• Never ending tracks - Access and enjoy close to 500,000 user-generated tracks (and growing), from wherever you are.
• Introducing ModTraveler & ModMiles – Keep connected on the road by photographing your Mod's in exotic locations or earning miles while racing MNR tracks away from home, both of which will unlock rare and unique items to add to your collection.
• Race track design in under a minute – Access all the new touch-create tools and design, decorate and customize your own tracks for everyone to play in record time.