PlayStation LifeStyle » United Front Games

True Crime: Hong Kong Hitting the Streets Next Year

Tyler Minarik — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 01:28:33 +0000

True Crime: Hong Kong was canceled earlier this year by Activision, and now picked back up by Square Enix, who has just set a time frame for the game’s release.

It was only a few days ago that we reported to you about True Crime: Hong Kong‘s rescue scenario, where Square Enix acquire the publishing rights to the game after seeing potential in it that apparently wasn’t worth Activision’s time or money. The publisher is excited about the new acquisition, with their London Studios general manager Lee Singleton saying, “When we first saw and got our hands on the game we fell in love with it.” However, at the time they were moot on the point of release dates, with him stating “We’re not talking about release timings or formats at this time.”

Apparently that amount of time was quite short, because earlier today we found a posting on Square Enix’s website stating the game will be releasing sometime in 2012. The game formerly known as True Crime: Hong Kong was previously slated for this November, so it’s clear that United Front Games still has a bit of work to do on it yet, perhaps including thinking of a new title. It was also mentioned that since the acquisition of publishing rights the name would need to be changed, but to something fairly straight forward according to Singleton. In the mean time United Front Games seems happy to be able to finish their project, with President Stefan Wessels saying they are “really pleased to be working with Square Enix London Studios and their excitement on the game means a great deal to us.” Hopefully this is Activision’s folly to Square Enix’s benefit, since there have been rumblings of Square Enix’s projected profits being slashed, leading many to speculate about their future success.

Modnation Racers Meets a Monumental Milestone

Corey Schwanz — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:04:55 +0000

Modnation Racers, the PlayStation 3′s own Race, Create, Share title released just 9 months ago already has some fantastic news to share.

United Front Games’ first venture into the kart-racing genre seems to be a successful one. Not only was the game just recently announced to be one of the PS3′s Greatest Hits (bringing the price to a nice $29.99), as well a full digital release on the PlayStation Store today, but Modnation Racers just had its 2 millionth creation published. 2 million.

The developer revealed:

If you download and race one track a day, everyday, it would take you well over one full millennium to finish, and that’s including leap year days!

And what better way to celebrate this occasion than with a contest? Sponsored by Progressive Insurance, the free Parts Pack will be available tomorrow and will include 13 new items to play around with. If you use any of the parts to create a custom track for the contest, you could be entered to win a PlayStation Move Sports Champions Bundle, or even a Sony Bravia 3DTV. So go get creating!

[Source]

True Crime Developer Speaks Out on The Game’s Cancellation

Matt Baker — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 01:34:25 +0000

The world’s largest publisher, Activision dropped a few bombshells yesterday when they announced their latest financial results. Not only did the entire Guitar Hero series get shelved, along with DJ Hero 3, the company also completely stopped the development of United Front Games’ True Crime: Hong Kong. The ModNation Racers‘ developer has now spoken about the cancellation of their project.

Activision CEO, Bobby Kotick stated that the reason for the True Crime reboot being canned was “based on the desire to focus on the greatest opportunities that the company currently has to create the world’s best interactive entertainment experiences.” Kotick’s right hand man Eric Hirshberg, COO of Activision Publishing, said the cancellation of the title was that it wouldn’t be able to compete against the best games in the sandbox genre.

United Front Games said regarding the sad news on their website:

We are sorry we did not get a chance to complete this project with Activision, but we understand why. We are both committed to doing quality games and nothing less. Maybe we will have a chance to work together in the future, but in the meantime we are setting our creative sights on a different horizon. You can keep up with the latest developments at UFG here on our site.

The future of the developer is unclear, and hopefully the independent studio will be able to weather the financial difficulties such a cancellation will inevitably cause.

ModNation DLC-mania

Tyler Minarik — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 07:45:46 +0000

Continuing with the support of their play, create, share themed karting game, United Front Games has announced today that they will be releasing a slew of content throughout the coming months.

The content will include more pieces for customizing tracks, karts, parts, and costumes of some our favorite PlayStation characters. On December 21st the first piece of this action will release on PSN and will include a career extension as well as a Far East theme for track creation. Following that in January are Jak & Daxter costumes and karts, as well as Helghast karts and costumes in February. No details on pricing have been given at this time.

Free DLC and Double XP Drifts to ModNation Racers

Jonathan Leack — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 02:04:50 +0000

ModNation Racers has been one of the most customizable experiences in recent years with its fully user-created society featuring custom cars, tracks, and even characters. United Front Games has been supporting the game heavily with additional content, and now the company is looking to offer some special bonuses for free!

Starting on October 26th, the first of two planned part packs is going to be released for ModNation Racers. This special pack includes ramps, props, and several other items to enhance the level editor. The best part? It will be available absolutely free for two-weeks following release. In addition, United Front Games is hosting a double XP week starting on October 26th as well.

For those who have ModNation Racers but haven’t played it in a while, now’s a great chance to hop back into the wonderful world of Mods. A patch was released not too long ago which addressed community concerns, the region-lock was done away with, and the experience is much more developed now that thousands of users have uploaded their fine work. Also, with double XP offered for a whole week, it’d be crazy not to join. Start warming up your engine!

[Source]

ModNation Racers Takes Shortcut, Receives Price Cut

The Great Thomasio — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 05:50:49 +0000

It was easy for gamers to overlook United Front Games ModNation Racers earlier this Summer. Stuck between the releases of Blur, Split/Second, and the multi-platinum selling blockbuster, Red Dead Redemption, ModNation Racers didn’t exactly burn up the sales chart. However, that didn’t stop the game from being one of the BEST Kart racers released the past 5 years. Fantastic news for all of you who might have waited on this overlooked gem, as Sony has issued a price cut for both the PS3 and PSP versions of the game.

With over 300,000 tracks available to burn rubber on, now is the perfect time to join the ModNation Racing League. For a cool $39.99, this ticket is ridiculously good deal. Just like the original LittleBigPlanet, this ‘Play. Create. Share.’ is going to keep you busy for a long, long time. For those who might a taste of MNR on the go, the PSP version has been slashed to a oh-so-nice price of $19.99. With over 16,000 tracks created, the PSP version is the perfect counterpart to it’s bigger brother.

If this price cut doesn’t entice you, then make sure you read PlayStation LifeStyle’s Reviews for BOTH versions. Check out the PlayStation 3 Review and the PSP Review.

Are you tempted to join in on the ModNation fun? Let us know in the comments below.

ModNation Racers Frees Up Region Restrictions

Ray Conley — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:50:43 +0000

In spite of ModNation Racers’ overall success, some race jocks have harbored some gripes against its multiplayer feature. It wasn’t that the online racing was lacking in exhilarating thrills and nail-biting gameplay, but rather the restriction to playing with your buddies only in your region. Now that disappointment can be left in the dust.

The devs over at United Front Games had admitted that the region limitation was a result of how the game handled transferring the large amount of shared data between all the players for an online match. At the time of the title’s release, the current data transferring would only work well within shorter distances, mainly to preserve the performance of the game. However, after a few mods to their own ModNation Racer, they’ve finally manage to optimize the transfer protocols to enable worldwide racing!

The latest version of ModNation Racer 1.4 should take care the former restriction, and set you free to race with your pen pals on the other side of the world!

[Source]

True Crime Won’t Come to Hong Kong This Year

Paulmichael Contreras — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 21:38:44 +0000

True Crime: Hong Kong (or simply True Crime as publisher Activision refers to it) is the third entry in the True Crime series of games. While the first two entries were developed by now-defunct Luxoflux, this entry will be developed by the geniuses behind ModNation Racers at United Front Games. But even they cannot stop the possibility of a delay…

The game (which apparently originally had a female lead character, an idea that Activision shot down) was originally slated to be released this fall, then it was pushed back until November. Now, according to the latest earnings report from Activision, the title has been pushed back into 2011:

“Activision Publishing has moved the anticipated release date for its upcoming open-world action title, True Crime: Hong Kong, from 2010 to 2011 in order to give the development team more time to deliver the high-quality entertainment experience they envision for the game.”

Given UFG’s previous work with the excellent ModNation Racers, there is little doubt that this extra time will really add polish to the game. Hopefully the game will not have any loading issues on launch date, though…

ModNation Racers Receives a Major Tune Up with Newest Patch

The Great Thomasio — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:01:39 +0000

Since being released this past May, ModNation Racers has been plague by two glaring issues — ridiculous load times and crushing AI on any level of the game you play on. Who doesn’t love when they’re 50ft from the finish-line, in 1st place, only to get blasted by your rival and fall all the way to 7th?! Have no fear though, United Front Games has been working day and night on to improve MNR and you’ll only have to wait a few more days until the improvements arrive. Ladies and gentlemen..get ready to start…your..engines!

Fans of ModNation Racer get ready to fall back in love with MNR because the following updates below are sure to get you back in the driver’s seat for United Front Game’s racer.

Load times have been improved tremendously. Sony even claims that some have been cut by 50%. Impressive!! Kinda sucks that I can’t make a sandwich in-between races anymore though..
The Casual Difficulty mode will arrive. We reported about this a couple weeks back. No longer will the AI be SO badass that you have to retry a race 4 times just to win. Perhaps this could attract some casual gamers, as well.
Previously, you could NOT invite friends to XP races. Once the patch hits next week, this will be no longer. Now you and your amigos can level your way(s) to the top of the MNR mountain.
For those of you cheaters who found glitches to cut through laps to create some
ludicrous lap times, your days are numbered. The patch will fix this problem. Booyah!
Your ‘Player card’ will now appear on ALL of your creations and not just some of them.
Online mode has been majorly improved. Have you had problems with staying online and taking forever to get into an online race? Ok, first the bad: the team has removed the online chat room before races. The good: This will improve the online structure ten-fold.
Remember how much of a punk it was completing the challenges of Devastator takedown on Wild Run, the Devastator takedown on Modobahn and the “sideswipe three opponents on the cliff side” task on Fracture?? Good news! These challenges are being re-imagined so you can get that trophy for completing all challegenes in the game. Yessss.
Free stuff!! The Tin bucket item will be available to everyone. Who doesn’t love free?

The patch goes live sometime next week! Stay tuned to PlayStation LifeStyle and we will let all you Moddies know when she’s live!!

Details on Upcoming ModNation Patch Emerge from the Pit

Adam Wolfe — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:10:16 +0000

Last week we told you that not only will the upcoming patch for ModNation Racers be improving loading times, but will also be adding a new casual mode. Now details have emerged from the pit about what this upcoming massive patch will be adding.

For those that have competed with friends in casual racers of ModNation Racers, you may have found it quite discouraging that you can’t earn XP during these races. Well word today tells us that the upcoming patch will now allow you to play with friends in XP races. There is no way of knowing if people will try and take advantage of this feature to artificially boost their online rank, but if we know anything about online gamers it’s that they will always find a way to bend the rules.

The patch is nearing final development and hopefully will be seeing the light of day in the next couple weeks.

[Source]

ModNation Goes Casual With Upcoming Patch

Adam Wolfe — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:07:33 +0000

United Front Games have been working on a new patch for ModNation Racers for a little bit now, and today we get the first bit of info on what it will include.

During their usual “ModNation Monday’s” post on the PSBlog they talked just briefly about the new patch. Here’s what they had to say:

I know everybody wants to know more about the patch that’s in development. We appreciate your patience as UFG places the final touches on it. There’s been a lot of community feedback and I think UFG has done a good job trying to include a lot of the improvements you’ve asked for. One of the improvements is the addition of a “casual” career difficulty that has less “aggressive” computer-controlled racers. I was able to spend some time last week playing the new build. Let me just say that I had a blast playing through the casual career difficulty and I think those that have been asking for this will be very pleased when you can get your hands on it!

Now even though there isn’t a lot of information there, but what is there is rather interesting. Sometimes the AI drivers in ModNation can be down right frustrating even on the easiest setting, so having a new casual mode should be nice. It is not yet known if this will have any effect on say the trophies which have you doing certain things during the career. Now this isn’t a big deal, but for trophy hunters out there this could be major.

No other details were given and no release date was set, but judging by the comments we should be seeing this release sometime within the next few weeks.

[Source]

ModNation Racers Pits Racers vs. Designers w/ Competition

Cameron Teague — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:34:44 +0000

Who doesn’t love a good competition? Especially when the prizes are as great as a PS3, a game and cash money. Well Sony has teamed with Hype Circle Media Network to bring us the ModNation Racers: Racers vs. Designers competition and microsite for a chance to win a Grand Prize of $2500 cash, a PlayStation PS3 console, extra controller, ModNation Racers game and PlayStation Bluetooth headset along with many more prizes.

To enter the contest, all you must do is simply click here and answer questions based on the drift racers (Tanner Foust and Tyler McQuarrie) and the vinyl designers (Huck Gee and Jesse Hernandez). The answers to all the questions can easily be obtained from watching the videos and checking out the profiles for both racers and drivers.

The contest is currently in session and will run until June the 20th so hurry on over and answer those questions, it just might be your lucky day!

Crash Team Racing Meets ModNation Racers

Kishen Patel — Sun, 30 May 2010 02:15:15 +0000

Sony’s premium kart-racing title ModNation Racers was just released with the promise of building upon the genre Media Molecule gave birth to, known as “Play, Create, Share”. With deep yet intuitive customization, there is no doubt that United Front Games successfully achieved their goal of invigorating LittleBigPlanet’s mantra. That said, it should come to no surprise that the PlayStation Network community have already crafted some jaw-dropping content.

Nostalgic PlayStation gamers should immediately identify the track in the video below as “Tiger Temple” from Naughty Dog’s award-winning PlayStation kart racer, Crash Team Racing. Even coming from little to no experience with CTR, most everyone will be floored by the professional level of detail and more importantly the impressive custom track, characters, and karts. Owners of ModNation Racers will definitely want to get their hands on this one.

ComposerRyan’s “Tiger Temple” remake and the other CTR related mods are available for download within the Share section of ModNation Racers. Check out the official debut video for this content below:

ModNation Racers Gets Hilarious Viral Advertisment

Anthony Severino — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:49:02 +0000

ModNation Racers is now available everywhere, and to coincide with its launch in Europe a hilarious viral ad has been released that asks you… “If you could mod… Would you?” After watching the video and having a good laugh, ask yourself the same question. You know you would if you could…

So would you mod if you could? What did you think about the video?

PSP Review – ModNation Racers

Louis Edwards — Tue, 25 May 2010 03:31:07 +0000

Welcome to the world of kart racing on the PSP. ModNation Racers (MNR) for the PSP is the newest member of the”Play, Create, Share” family and fits right in with LittleBigPlanet. With an unprecedented track creator, that gives you a full range of tools in an easy to use environment, SCEA San Diego and United Front Games has gone above and beyond any other kart game known to gamers. The kart studio and mod studios are just as easy to use and the creations are only limited by your imagination. Tracks can be created in as little as two minutes, or you could just as easily spend two days working on a massive track. The track tools are simple and easy to use.

While the creation studio shines, the actual racing isn’t quite as good. The drifting takes some getting used to and doesn’t feel as dynamic as it should. That doesn’t kill the gaming experience, but it does slightly detract from it. During action races, you can pick up weapons to use on your opponents, but the PSP version doesn’t allow multiple pick-ups to strengthen these weapons so there’s no need to hold onto them. Use them as you get them is your best bet.

The story mode finds you on the Mod Racing Championship (MRC) circuit. You’re a rookie with a veteran crew chief to help you on your journey. The commentary and story line is very humorous and makes the story mode fun. The banter between the two analysts makes watching the videos worth your time.

The MRC consists of five racing series with up to eight individual races per series. As you progress through each race, you unlock items by completing tasks in three categories. The “Advance” category is what you need to move on to the next race in the series, and usually just requires you to finish third or better unless it’s the final race in the series, and that one you have to win. The “Payoff” category unlocks items to be used in the Create Studios. The final category is “Bonus” and can require you take out an Elite driver which in turn unlocks that driver’s mod and kart which allows them to be used by you. The difficulty starts out fairly easy, but gets harder as you progress along.

If you are looking for a single player race there are three types of races available. The “Action” race is where you pick up weapons and take out your opponents on the way to the finish line. A “Pure” race, where it’s just karts versus karts with no weapons to be found. Unique to the PSP version of MNR is “Last Kart Standing”. In this mode a timer starts after the initial lap is completed and every time that counter reaches zero, the person in last place is eliminated. You can set the timer for 20 seconds, 30 seconds, or 45 seconds.

We were unable to connect online so no online features were tested. The ability to download mods, karts, and tracks that other users have created adds to the overall replayability of the game and should give countless hours of enjoyment.

ModNation Racers PSP isn’t an entirely new game, as other kart racers have been around for years. What MNR PSP brings to the kart racing genre is the unprecedented ability to create your own tracks, karts , and mods, share them with others, and even download new items online. If you’re looking for a fun little game to take on the go, pick this one up for sure.

PlayStation LifeStyle’s Final Score

Customizable tracks, karts, and mods make the game infinitely replayable

Incredibly easy to use track creator which can create tracks in minutes

Decent graphics complement suitable audio