Trackmania Sunrise

Sam let's the sunshine in...

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To keep things extra fresh the camera's position will occasionally change. If there's a drag strip of boost tiles and the car is going faster than a 13 year-old's wrist at a porno convention then the view changes to a bumper cam, resplendent with smearing from the motion blur effect. And for those truly convoluted pathways the game may decide to give the player a top-down, Micro Machines style view of the proceedings. This distant view from a slightly more conventional angle also comes into play for those ridiculous ramp to ramp transfers which populate the more extreme tracks. And in another move designed to make the game a little bit friendlier, there are now ramps on the outside edges of most tracks which allow you to get back onto the course without having to resort to a costly reset, something which is a small alteration that has a big effect on one's enjoyment of the game.

Trackmania's driving model demands precision while playing fast and lose with the laws of gravity and inertia. Cars hang in the sky for an inordinate amount of time and you can even accelerate and break while sailing through the air. In fact, many of the gaps you have to traverse require you too lift off the gas at just the right time, often when airborne. Each of the three vehicles handles very differently. The sports car is the easiest, and to my mind most enjoyable, of the three to drive. The bay car is a top-heavy SUV that is a happy medium between the racer and the last vehicle, the coast car. This slower than geology buggy takes an age to get moving and turns with all the elegance of a wrecking ball. The environments for each of the cars suit their different handling characteristics and a little practice does ease the initial antagonism of the more 'spirited' vehicles. Personally I never grew to like the coast car but the sheer uncompromising thrill of the insanely fast sports car more then made up for this. The complete lack of collision detection with the other racers on the track continues to be somewhat disappointing, although it's easy to appreciate how its inclusion would fundamentally alter the way the game plays. The skill comes from finding the correct route and then the fastest way to drive that route rather than your ability in passing opponents. The other cars on the track do a t least serve one purpose. As you work your way up through the medals a colour-coded car will flesh out the time to beat to gain the next medal level, especially handy when the gold coloured car takes a shortcut, letting you know the path to take if you want to get the fastest time

Joining the track editor are editors which allow you to alter just about every aspect of the game except for the actual underlying mechanics. The most enjoyable editor is the paint package, which allows you to fully customise your rides with a variety of paint jobs, stickers and patterns. You can make some truly hideous combinations which you can then take online in the hope that the garishness of your vehicle may put off the other competitors. You can edit replays and ghost laps if you fancy and the track editor has been given a bit of a facelift, making it a little bit easier to use and a lot simpler for the novice to get to grips with. The official campaigns will take a decent chunk of time to complete and the multiplayer offers up the prospect of near-limitless racing and puzzling. Trackmania: Sunrise has an extraordinary amount of longevity tucked away in its heart.

Multiplayer is extremely well catered for. For those with no network connections at all there's the Hotseat mode. For those who get there thrills from LAN games Nadeo have you covered. And for those who like their multiplayer seasoned on the internet there's more then enough content to keep you playing until Trackmania: Sunset comes along. The most popular choice is of course the racing, although there are usually plenty of servers offering up the more platform-based style of play. Logging in to the service seemed to take a rather long time yet once I'd chosen a server things nipped along at a fair old pace. You don't really have much clue as to what you are getting yourself in for until you take the plunge and as most servers lean towards fan-made tracks it can take a while to get a race-wining rhythm together. It's here online, racing against other humans, that the lack of collision detection is at its most disappointing. It's a shame that there's no option to enable it, but judging by some of the elasticised warping of other players it doesn't seem like the network code is up to such a task. Up to 16 players can play the same challenge and the banter is pretty healthy for such a fast-paced game. The Trackmania community is a very strong and energetic one so there are always plenty of new courses to try your hand at. New tracks are delivered by a fully integrated peer-2-peer file sharing system so both downloads and uploads are seamlessly handled in-game. Given the vibrancy and talent of the community, it's pretty inconceivable that gamers will run out of new challenges to test themselves against. The first time I started the game there was already a bunch of bonus developer-made maps and there's already over 30 new maps on the official site.

Trackmania: Sunrise is a deceptively simple game, one of those classics that you can instantly pick up and play but which colludes with the pleasure seeking part of your brain into compelling you to keep on playing until you master all its little nuances. Gameplay-wise, Sunrise is no great leap forward from the two previous Trackmanias. However, it significantly improves the visuals and music, smoothes over many of the rougher edges that characterised earlier efforts and defines itself as the premier racing puzzle game. Fans of the first Trackmania should get this sequel immediately. The improved aesthetics are nearly reason enough while the new modes and the increased professionalism of the package as a whole really seal the deal. If you've never played a Trackmania game before there's now no reason not to. Unless you aren't a good enough gamer for the challenge.

88%

By Sam Gibson