Sony has released a new preview trailer for February’s PlayStation Plus offerings. We already know about Outlast being offered for free on the PlayStation 4 but what can PS3 and PS Vita users look forward?

PlayStation 3 users will receive Metro: Last Light, Remember Me and PayDay 2 for free. Metro: Last Light is the highlight, especially since it was one of the two best single player first person shooters of last year. PayDay 2 meanwhile is one of the best coop and multiplayer titles of all time, as you and 3 other friends work together to complete various heists. Remember Me is the odd one out but for a free game, it’s still a fun third person action adventure, beat ’em up.

Vita users can look forward to Street Fighter X Tekken and Modnation Racers: Road Trip, which both allow for cross platform functionality with their PS3 versions. While in the former you can challenge PS3 players, the latter allows you to use your PS3 creations on the go with the Vita version.

Which game are you most excited for? Let us know below.

Unfortunately, not much as changed with the series’ first PS Vita outing — ModNation Racers: Road Trip. MNR Vita still doesn’t have anything under its belt to set it apart from anything else we’ve ever seen in the kart racing genre, much less the racing genre as a whole. It still borrows heavily from more successful titles, and there are still some things that MNR: Road Trip doesn’t do right. However, it’s also pretty damn fun.

“The fuck?!”

Right from the get, what’s pretty clear at first is that, like all other MNR games, Road Trip is an exceedingly charming title. From the funny and snappily written dialogue and the character designs to the way the move itself and the beautiful visuals of the game, ModNation Racers: Road Trip is every bit as charming as a game can get. It’s quirky, it’s funny, it’s adorable- it’s everything a kart racer should ideally be. The visuals and the soundtrack are also nice, and the game looks very good and sharp on the beautiful OLED screen of the Vita. The art style is amazing and while the frame rate stutters every now and then and gets in the way of the action, it doesn’t affect the visuals department much.

It does affect the races, however. You see, MNR has always been about pure, unadulterated, chaotic fun, and ModNation Racers: Road Trip is no anomaly. It’s all about all-out fun, just as kart racers should be, Racing is a ton of fun, track design is awesome, using weapons and power ups to use in defence or offence is a blast, and it just gives off a very enjoyable vibe. When you play it alone, it’s amazing. But when you play it co-operatively with upto 4 friends, it’s an absolute blast. The co-op races add even more chaos and enjoyability to the races, and taking out your friends with homing missiles and whatnots is a whole lot of fun.

It’s-a me! Giant, big ass snowball!

It’s a pity that we cannot do this online, head-to-head with players all over the world. ModNation Racers does not support online head-to-head play, which is a shame, because not only were these races a ton of fun in the PS3 and PSP versions of the game, but also because the Vita has mind blowing online functionalities, and thus, this is a baffling omission indeed. It’s probably because no one played them much in the PSP version of the game, but removing the feature altogether is a bit too harsh, and doesn’t make much sense.

But thankfully, Road Trip still fully supports the Create and Share mechanics that have now become synonymous with LittleBigPlanet and ModNation Racers. The creation tools have been made much more accessible with Road Trip. It’s a process that is completed in stages. First and foremost, you select a basic template, a theme for your track. From then on, you add more layers to your tracks, and you can keep utilizing them and tweaking until they’re all to your liking. The creation tools in MNR: Road Trip are mind bogglingly large in number, and you can basically create anything you want. You can create a track in a desert with penguins in the stands and a huge archway in the middle of the track. You can literally spend countless hours, just creating and customizing stuff.

Creation tools for mods (racers) and karts are also deep and extensive, and you get new stuff to use and play with after almost every race. It’s a robust creation system that lefts you create anything you want. Anything, no limitations at all.

The Gates of Hell

Of course, we such an extensive and deep creation system, the menus are bound to be clutter and many in numbered, and it’s a bit hard to fit them all on the comparatively smaller Vita screen without seeming cluttered. However, the user interface of Road Trip is awesome, especially because the menus are slick and easy to navigate, now that we have touch controls. And this is not just for the creation tools — the entire game has an amazing user interface.

Sharing all this data is easy and simple too, but the best part about sharing is that all the content created in the PS3 version of MNR is available for download here. This adds a lot to the experience, and seeing all your favourite UGC on the Vita is great.

There are some downsides to the game though, other than the ones I’ve already mentioned- later in the campaign, the game gets too difficult, and races start getting a bit too long. The AI never feels cheap like in Mario Kart, but it does become very punishing nonetheless. While the artificial intelligence is great initially, its imbalanced nature makes the gameplay very inconsistent, and this difficulty sometimes gets in the way of having fun.

However, overall, the campaign is great. It provides for some really fun, chaotic races that I will remember for some time, and the dialogue and the cutscenes were unexpectedly good. Long loading times get in the way of the action plenty, and these can be really frustrating sometimes and are huge downers.

“Wheeeeeee!!!!!”

Ultimately, ModNation Racers: Road Trip is, quote frankly, an unremarkable game. There’s lots of fun to be had here, and the game has lots of replay value- the creation tools are mind blowing. But there are some omissions, like there being no head to head online races, that are very disappointing. At the end of the day, MNR: Road Trip may not be the best Vita launch game — that title goes to either Uncharted or Wipeout — but it’s definitely worth buying.

This game was reviewed on the PS Vita.

It was recently announced that the PS Vita ModNation game, ModNation Racers: Road Trip, will not have head-to-head online races, and this decision was met with a lot of criticism by the fans and critics. However, the devs have given the reasoning behind this baffling omission, saying they wanted to try out the new capabilities of the Vita, and that they did not want to “rehash old features” and still “evolve online functionality”. Huh… kinda weird, don’t you think?

“The team here in San Diego created an impressive list of online functionality to take advantage of the WiFi/3G and GPS functionality,” said  studio director Erich Haas.

“I know there are some of you that are disappointed that ModNation Racers: Road Trip doesn’t let you play head-to-head online other than ad-hoc. But we really wanted to evolve online functionality and take advantage of the PlayStation Vita’s unique feature set in new ways,” he said, after offering descriptions of the game’s online leaderboards, time trial matchmaking, ghosts and local-only multiplayer features.

“If all we ever did as developers is rehash features that have been done in previous games, we’d still be entering passwords instead of using save files and you’d have to start the entire game over after you lost your three lives (extra 1-ups aside),” he said, comparing the decision not to include online multiplayer in MRRT with the universal decision replace clunky password saves with more intuitive save data systems in the 1980s.

“While online head-to-head has been a mode used in many games in recent years, we focused on making a game that is crafted for how portable games are most often played-in quicker ‘pick up and play’ sessions multiple times in a day. Your online interaction, competition and socialisation will always be when it’s convenient for you.”

So, top evolve multiplayer, you decided not to have real time online matches? Real smart.

[EU PS Blog]

Sony has announced that the PS Vita version of their kart racing franchise, called ModNation Racers: Road Trip, will not feature online play. That’s a huge bummer because, well, ModNation Racers, the franchise, is basically all about sharing, creating and playing online. Without online, half the fun of the game has been taken away. More than half, actually.

The game’s producer, Vernon Mollette II confirmed yesterday via live chat that the game will not have online multiplayer, and that it will feature only Ad-Hoc. This is a huge surprise, since even the PSP version had online.

The game will feature “asynchronous” multiplayer, in which players will record their best times on laps and play against ghost cars. Players will, however, be able to share their created tracks online.

All the trophies of the game will also be achievable without an online connection.

This is a huge bummer, since half the appeal of the game has been taken away. Oh well, let’s wait and see how it pans out.

Some time ago, Sony asked fans to suggest a name for the upcoming ModNation Racers Vita over at the PlayStation Blog. Sony has now picked a title, and it sounds pretty good. The game will be called ModNation Racers: Road Trip.

“Thanks to all who submitted thousands of great ideas for the title of the new game,” said Sony San Diego. “As we mentioned, we have some “goodies” to hand out to a few gamers who helped us choose the name ModNation Racers: Road Trip. We will be contacting them very soon.”

PS Vita releases in Japan on December 17 and early next year in US and Europe.

Stay tuned to GB for more updates.