On the heels of our recent price-drop for Warhawk, and for all of our fans both rookies and veterans, we have decided to hold a new Warhawk Competition!

Many of us here in the States have been spending way too much time staring at our brackets so we’re opting not to do a traditional “bracketed” tournament based on teams or clans. Instead, we’re going to make this competition more accommodating of the individual player by hosting special Capture the Flag Servers that players can join and play on. These servers will have their stats tracked separately for the duration of the competition, specifically Points earned, and these stats will be displayed on a new Tab labeled “TOURNY” that we are adding to the Warhawk website and this new tab will process and update all the player data periodically — so if you get a kill or flag capture and then *immediately* go check the “TOURNY” Tab, just be aware that the server churns all the data every 6 hours and your fine, fine combat skills may take a bit of time to be displayed

So here are the ground rules:

• Competition starts on April 2nd at 12:00 (UK time)  and will run through May 3rd at 12:00 (UK time).

• Players must play on Official SONY Servers named “Tournament-CTF-1,2,3, etc”.

• Competition is open to North American *AND* European players.

• The top 50 players that have earned the most Points on these designated servers will win the competition.

Winners will receive the very rare Champions Blade! It’s an in-game weapon like a trophy that you can bash people with. You’ll also get a special edition Warhawk shirt for your avatar in HOME – only available to the winners of this competition!

So…

Start sharpening your skills and get ready for the competition — and who knows, you may even run into a dev or two

Rock on,

-dylan

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In case you missed it, last night The SingStar Rooms VIP saw the launch of an exclusive Stereophonics gig. What’s more, Kelly and Richard from the band came and visited the space and were completely mobbed by you lot! (check the screenshots).

Natalie Burgar, from the PR team, was on hand to ask the band a few of your questions in the evening, so take a look at the video and see what happened on the night.

The SingStar Rooms VIP will be rocking to Stereophonics until April 8th, so if you’ve not headed over yet, you’ve got plenty of time!

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As promised, here’s Nick Letizia from United Front taking you in depth with the different weapons you can find in the game. Enjoy!

Hi PS Blog dwellers,

Because Mat has already gone in to how racing skill and split-screen are key in ModNation Racers, I’m here to chat about a key part of the title — weapons. Specifically, it’s what we like to call the “Boom Box” weapon system.

Take a peek at our new trailer for a taste and read more below on how ModNation Racers will bring the BOOM on May 25.

Designing the Boom Box
When making ModNation Racers, we realized the need to advance the kart racing genre to the next level with a more physical driving model, but we also wanted to change how players use weapons. Nothing feels better than taking an opponent down, but that feeling of euphoria is soon forgotten when you are on the receiving end of an attack. Weapons can change the course of a race — it’s one of the defining characteristics in this genre, but we wanted to reduce the frustration of unskilled randomness.

Strategy – Using the Ladder
In ModNation Racers you can choose to make your weapons more powerful, but that doesn’t always come easy. When you get hammered with a lightning bolt from the sky, at the very least, you know your opponent had to work for it. In addition to having the choice between powering up your weapons or using them right away, we wanted players to plan out attacks and utilize weapons in different ways. With that in mind, we designed each to have three distinct levels – so when you level up, each level changes the properties of the weapon, which then gives the player a different style of attack.

Level 2 Bolt attack will hit multiple karts / If the driver a head of you is bringing the HEAT, these puppies will SEEK it.

Using the Bolt ladder as an example, players can decide to fire off a level-1 Bolt attack for a quick but risky electrical takedown, they can save up to a level-2 Chain Bolt for a more powerful homing attack that can electrocute multiple opponents. Or they can wait until they have a level-3 Bolt Storm (the most powerful) and try to shock entire pack.

Drop it like it’s Hot

Finally, any level of weapon can be dropped behind the kart as a mine…the higher the level of weapon the more potent the mine. This is a great way to leave traps for your opponents, and incidentally, gives the pack leader the ability to still be able to use the weapons he has collected. Now you’re probably asking, “Why would I not just save up and always fire a powerful level-3?” Well, a number of reasons actually, but first and foremost is that your weapons can be knocked out by an opponent’s attack, so holding a weapon for too long might cause you to eventually lose it.

This is going to hurt.

Also, level-3 weapons take time to work their way through the pack, so your opponents might finish the race before they are hit, or they may have built up enough boost to shield your attack.

Balance
One of our core mantras when balancing the weapons was to ensure that there aren’t any “silver bullets.” No matter how powerful the weapon is, there is still a chance to evade it. We also wanted to ensure a tight race, so the power of each stun is scaled based on your position in the race and distance from the player attacking. What that does is allow anyone in the pack to always have a chance. This isn’t so much a “punish the leader” situation, but a way to prevent stalemates. If players in positions 7th to 1st are hit by the player in 8th and stunned for an equal length of time, nothing will change. By having the weapons stun time (slightly) increase as it passes through the racers in front of you helps to create a more dynamic race. This then opens up more opportunities for everyone to have a chance at changing their position.

Sonic Bombs will give the kart in front of you an earful / The Sonic Rift Blasts all the Racers between you and First

Let’s be clear though, there isn’t going to be a significant difference between the weapons power on the last racer as compared to the leader, but enough to make the leader worry that there are always racers on their tail. We have raced thousands millions of times in the office, and a skilled driver utilizing all of the tools at their disposal can maintain a lead, and that was an important factor for us. Skilled drivers should be rewarded for skilled play, which in turn causes other players to have to think and play differently.

We have a particular useful strategy we sometimes employ here at the office to take down a skilled driver. Two players will “team up” to swap positions and then each fire at the player in front in quick succession, the first to hopefully drain their shield, and the second to take them out. Very effective, although normally those alliances last about as long as the distance it takes to get to the next set of item pods, at which point all bets are off.

That’s weapons in a nutshell. I’m sure everyone is going to find all sorts of fun ways to take out opponents online when the game is released, so until then I will leave you all to your plotting.

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FORE!

As some of you may be aware, Sunday March 28th marks a historic day in the Everybody’s Golf community!

This date marks the second anniversary of the release of Everybody’s Golf World Tour, and the second anniversary of the original EGWT Community Fun Night. We figured that’s a darn good excuse to get together and smash out a few rounds on the links, so we’ve put together an event which we’re calling The Big Number 2! (Calm down in the back, please…)

So, whether you’re already an avid player or even if you’ve got the game hidden away in your collection – join us this Sunday and take part in our birthday celebrations. Keep an eye on our forum thread for full details or follow me on twitter for more information on all our community events.

See you on the links

MB

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Hi all,

Last week SCEA announced their Preorder plan as well as confirming their release date, while I told you that we are releasing the same week. Well I can finally reveal the European Preorder packs and over the coming weeks I will be able to let you know where you will be able to pick up each pack in your country.

So lets confirm the following:

• Yes we will have Kratos
• Yes we will have Drake
• Yes we will have Ratchet &Clank

But that’s not all we are giving you….

There will be 3 packs in total each of which contain one PlayStation Hero and TWO United Front created character and karts. So that three cool goodies to get you racing round your tracks in minutes.

So which pack do you want?

Kratos ‘God of War‘ Pack

Nathan Drake ‘Uncharted‘ Pack

Ratchet and Clank Pack

Keep checking the blog for where you can pick up each pack in your country.

So that’s one piece of good news now for another…

Anyone fancy a split screen race?

Yep that’s right ModNation will have 4 Player Split Screen. So get your mates round grab Four Dualshocks and Drift, crash, burn rubber to the finish line!

but that’s not all, maybe you just have one mate, one loved one or only 2 controllers… Well why not play against the world in a 2 player splits screen on-line race! that means 10 other foes can feel your wrath as you release that hydra weapon on their butts (we had to censor what I originally had written)

and finally I just wanted to leave you with a awesome trailer showing you the crazy racing fun to come with ModNation

Look out for a blog post from United Front’s Nick Letizia later tonight to tell you more about ModNation’s great weapons

Be good

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