Bringing up TrackMania in the past got a mixed reaction - I guess it's a kind of love it/hate it game. I love it.
For those not familiar with TrackMania - I'd still describe it as a mix between Stunt Car Racer and Skidmarks Construction Set. The premise is simple : create what looks like a terrible roller coaster ride then race on it with a car. Grab the free TrackMania Nations available at www.trackmania.com. The demos to the previous TrackMania and TrackMania Sunrise games are probably still floating about, too.
This time I'm pimping United - the latest in the series. While there are no major style additions to this game, it comes with all the 7 worlds the previous games came with, in one package. All worlds have received nice gfx updates and the Stadium arena (from TM Nations) has received a major blockset update, most noticeably sporting a dirt track. The main TM engine itself has reached a mature 2.0 status, basically meaning the gfx engine is purrrty. Even on my lousy GeForce 3.
There are no discounts for previous owners of TM games, but if you play this one for a while you'll realise the amount of work that has gone into this - I'd say still worth the purchase, plus there are some small benefits to be had if you register your previous TM keys online.
The main highlight of this game is it's online community structure. Nadeo has realised the online functions in Nations (which was downloaded over 20 million times) were a massive hit and they've gone beyond the call of duty upgrading their services for this game.
An Internet connection is still not required to play, but man, you'd be missing out. Oh one word of warning : get the boxed DVD, not the digital download, cuz the download has an activation limit.
The community Nadeo is forcing you into in this game is obvious from the get go - the menu screen has columns devoted to the latest news, highest ranking players and newest forum posts made in your country ('maniazone'). Clicking on anything here brings up an in game browser with more info. For instance, half of the four news posts so far contain details on community-driven offline and online held championships. Some of these championships have links to people's sites containing their tracks, clicking on a track or collection downloads them straight into the game.
Also, new tracks can be downloaded for each of the four main categories for each area - there are 7 areas as mentioned - Stadium (from Nations), Bay, Coast, Island (from Sunrise) and Desert, Snow and Rally from the original TrackMania. Each area has Easy, Medium, Hard and Extreme categories for tracks to fall into. If you're sick of the 5 or 6 tracks in each category that are shipped with the game, clicking the 'Get new tracks' button will download a randomly selected track from Nadeo's database of user created stuff. After playing one of these tracks, you get the option to provide feedback - whether it was too easy or too hard for this category, whether it was good or bad and you even get to send a comment to the author.
All of this comes at a price, of course. TM fans are familiar with the TM currency of coppers - well, United takes this concept into the online world. Any tracks downloaded costs a set price (set by the author I think - and I'm not sure where the coppers for 'purchased' tracks go - to the authors, or back to Nadeo?), entering yourself into the ranking tables costs a small amount (free for your first entry for each track), you can even buy replays for each track, to see exactly how the #1 ranked nerd did it.
Coppers can be earnt by logging in (your 'once a day' income can be improved if you owned the previous games), doing well in the rankings, or - and I'm guessing this is where the big 'money' is - uploading your own tracks online. Doing well in the rankings also gives you 'skill points', which, once you've accumulated enough of, you will be moved out of your country's ranks and into the Global ranks.
And of course, you can play single player/LAN just like you've always been able to.
My only little niggle is the soundtrack is pretty sparse considering it comes on a DVD. Whereas each area in Sunrise had 3 or 4 different tunes, in United every area only has one (new) tune, except for the Stadium arena which has three (vastly improved) remixes of the same tunes in Nations. Though this can be easily overcome by dumping the tunes from the previous games into this one - the new tunes compliment the old ones very well.
All in all, it's a pretty big achievement - previous owners of the games may have some ums and uhs about paying for this, but if you've never played TM, or played Nations, or the demos and enjoyed any of them, you'd be well advised to look into this one. People who have only played Nations should be advised that the 6 other areas have (and always have had) a more arcady feel - each car handles differently, which is why I recommend playing the demos of the older games first to get a feel for it before you make the purchase...
Official homepage at www.tm-united.com.
For those not familiar with TrackMania - I'd still describe it as a mix between Stunt Car Racer and Skidmarks Construction Set. The premise is simple : create what looks like a terrible roller coaster ride then race on it with a car. Grab the free TrackMania Nations available at www.trackmania.com. The demos to the previous TrackMania and TrackMania Sunrise games are probably still floating about, too.
This time I'm pimping United - the latest in the series. While there are no major style additions to this game, it comes with all the 7 worlds the previous games came with, in one package. All worlds have received nice gfx updates and the Stadium arena (from TM Nations) has received a major blockset update, most noticeably sporting a dirt track. The main TM engine itself has reached a mature 2.0 status, basically meaning the gfx engine is purrrty. Even on my lousy GeForce 3.
There are no discounts for previous owners of TM games, but if you play this one for a while you'll realise the amount of work that has gone into this - I'd say still worth the purchase, plus there are some small benefits to be had if you register your previous TM keys online.
The main highlight of this game is it's online community structure. Nadeo has realised the online functions in Nations (which was downloaded over 20 million times) were a massive hit and they've gone beyond the call of duty upgrading their services for this game.
An Internet connection is still not required to play, but man, you'd be missing out. Oh one word of warning : get the boxed DVD, not the digital download, cuz the download has an activation limit.
The community Nadeo is forcing you into in this game is obvious from the get go - the menu screen has columns devoted to the latest news, highest ranking players and newest forum posts made in your country ('maniazone'). Clicking on anything here brings up an in game browser with more info. For instance, half of the four news posts so far contain details on community-driven offline and online held championships. Some of these championships have links to people's sites containing their tracks, clicking on a track or collection downloads them straight into the game.
Also, new tracks can be downloaded for each of the four main categories for each area - there are 7 areas as mentioned - Stadium (from Nations), Bay, Coast, Island (from Sunrise) and Desert, Snow and Rally from the original TrackMania. Each area has Easy, Medium, Hard and Extreme categories for tracks to fall into. If you're sick of the 5 or 6 tracks in each category that are shipped with the game, clicking the 'Get new tracks' button will download a randomly selected track from Nadeo's database of user created stuff. After playing one of these tracks, you get the option to provide feedback - whether it was too easy or too hard for this category, whether it was good or bad and you even get to send a comment to the author.
All of this comes at a price, of course. TM fans are familiar with the TM currency of coppers - well, United takes this concept into the online world. Any tracks downloaded costs a set price (set by the author I think - and I'm not sure where the coppers for 'purchased' tracks go - to the authors, or back to Nadeo?), entering yourself into the ranking tables costs a small amount (free for your first entry for each track), you can even buy replays for each track, to see exactly how the #1 ranked nerd did it.
Coppers can be earnt by logging in (your 'once a day' income can be improved if you owned the previous games), doing well in the rankings, or - and I'm guessing this is where the big 'money' is - uploading your own tracks online. Doing well in the rankings also gives you 'skill points', which, once you've accumulated enough of, you will be moved out of your country's ranks and into the Global ranks.
And of course, you can play single player/LAN just like you've always been able to.
My only little niggle is the soundtrack is pretty sparse considering it comes on a DVD. Whereas each area in Sunrise had 3 or 4 different tunes, in United every area only has one (new) tune, except for the Stadium arena which has three (vastly improved) remixes of the same tunes in Nations. Though this can be easily overcome by dumping the tunes from the previous games into this one - the new tunes compliment the old ones very well.
All in all, it's a pretty big achievement - previous owners of the games may have some ums and uhs about paying for this, but if you've never played TM, or played Nations, or the demos and enjoyed any of them, you'd be well advised to look into this one. People who have only played Nations should be advised that the 6 other areas have (and always have had) a more arcady feel - each car handles differently, which is why I recommend playing the demos of the older games first to get a feel for it before you make the purchase...
Official homepage at www.tm-united.com.