TrackMania

Sam is driven manic by this light hearted racer...

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Over the next few days I'm going to be posting a review for three different driving games. Each one adheres to the basic driving principals of going faster than Saddam's dignity with the aim of beating your opponents to the finishing line. The first of these games is TrackMania, the rank outsider in a race where the other two competitors have massive sponsorship and team backing. But you will have to wait a day or two for the other reviews, so today let's have a good look at this somewhat unique racer from the little known French developers Nadeo.

At its roots and in its heart TrackMania is pure Stunt Car Racer. While it does make a few changes to the formula, most notably exchanging a first person viewpoint for a third, it retains that glorious 8-bit title's sense of fun and of the ridiculous. The graphics are of course a lot better and do look very nice indeed. There is some nasty Aliasing around the guardrails on corners but apart from that it all looks very lovely and spangly and should have no problems running on any decent machine. Mad courses are the order of the day with a plethora of loop-the-loops, insane jumps, twisting spirals, and some of the most vertigo-inducing racing lines yet experienced by an easy-chair-bound racing car driver. Your car will fly off the course at angles usually connected with drunks in mid collapse, grins will erupt across your face to be replaced by the facial twists associated with a powerful stream of invective. You will marvel at the ingenuity of the track designs from both the developers and a very accomplished community and you will eventually wish that there was maybe a little more structure to the game. You will definitely have fun with TrackMania - for how long depends on what you want out of your driving games.

TrackMania is a simple and very direct little game. There's no flashy intro, no vomit inducing interface screens swirling and jumping around like the visions of an Ebola-ridden Picasso, no glut of choices that would put a Dulux paint catalogue to shame, none of those fancy things that we have gotten so used to in the flashy presentation of today's racer. The game will not trouble you with such things as handbrake turns, nitro boosts, rear mirrors or anything like that. To play this game all you need is a keyboard with four keys, making it my choice for playing when I want to have a beer while getting my driving thrills.

The single player game is split into two parts, Race and Puzzle with a third option of playing maps of your own design or that of other players. There are three different terrains in the game and three different vehicles with which to tackle them. For the Alpine sections you get a bouncy pick-up truck; there's an American muscle car to tear across the desert sections with and a suspiciously Renault 5-looking buggy for the rally sections. Each terrain type has 16 races to steam through, with a bronze, silver or gold medal being presented to you depending on your time across each track. Each medal is worth some coppers, the games currency. The more coppers you earn the more pieces you can buy for building your own tracks, more of which later on. There are a total of 52 races to complete, with the last four only becoming unlocked once you manage to get a gold medal on every preceding course, quite a challenge, believe you me. The first round of eight races on each terrain is easy to complete, getting more tracks unlocked will take some time and skillz. Either way, 52 tracks is a healthy number to play with, and that doesn't take into account the ever expanding number of user made courses, more of which later.