I know Trackmania is definitely old news to most of you. I had heard about it over and over but never actually tried it until 2 days ago. Holy hot damn! I seriously rank this game as one of my favorite in the racing genre. I always loved extreme acrobatics mixed in with racing such as loops and corkscrws, whatever! And this game delivers hardcore and in the most reasonable way possible. I am seriously supremely addicted and this is the first game to grab me like this in awhile. And I think to myself how mad I am to have tried it so late, and then I think how I see people playing top notch SNES titles for the first time and feel so jealous that this is there first time experiencing masterpieces while I know them ten times over. Trackmania is so damn sick! Especially with how open their editor is to everyone. Allowing you to embed custom textures and songs into each track. Damn, this is a great step in really customizing and showing off in an online game, especially a game where lag doesn't effect the outcome of the game, it doesn't mean anything! It's all based off your timer, it's just genius! Online I have been doing pretty damn good even though I am a newbie, I guess it's just the long time gamers reflex, I kinda snapped to it. & even though the official music has become slightly tiresome, the tracks are reminiscent of Ridge Racer tunes which is always a good thing. If anyone plays I would love to build up the friends list. As I have said I am addicted!
I used to play it quite a bit online and it's was one of those games that was just so damn fun. The editor was great too although i never used it that much. It was great to jump online ad just try to get the best possible time which was quite hard on some tracks because the editor allowed you the freedom to do quite a lot of different jumps, loops....etc. Sadly i don't have the game any more since i've just got my PC back up and running so sold all my racing games and wheel to go towards new parts but might have to get it again. There is a new game coming out in september, TrackMania 2: Canyon.
Trackmania is awesome! I played Nations for some time until they switched to the free zones (meh...), just recently bought United for 5€ new. @3DO: You played Trackmania with a racing wheel? :-0 I always play with keyboard, far better than with a gamepad somehow. Good news on the new game, will check it out.
Nations is the only one I have played. Is the previous version better in its own way or nay? Also, what was it like before the free zones? I don't mind it too much. & I wish I had a racing wheel for the PC! I use straight 360 Game pad. Works a treat, besides the joystick that gets stuck going left all the time. :banghead: I know this is off topic, but does any game have at true racing wheel simulation? As in if you wanted to U-turn you would have to turn the wheel as much in real life? I would love something like that. Only reason I don't like racing wheels too much is that it's dead zone tends to be so lenient compared to actuality.
Nations only has the F1 style races (which are cool) only, United unites all race modes in one game, i love it, especially the desert and island (up to 1000 km/h) modes. Before the free zones, there were no free servers, only Nations servers. Now it´s split up, free users can´t connect to regular servers. Plus the 5 races limit i read about (drive 5 races, have to watch one race as a spectator, dunno if they really implemented this) made me stop playing nations. Interestingly i mostly play the free servers now that i got the full version, so it´s not that bad i guess. Can´t say much about racing wheels, i hate them!
@nameless hero I never got round to using my wheel with Trackmania or other games because by the time i got my wheel my computer started failing so i ahd to sell it to get money to fix my computer. @CrAzY There is quite a few racing sims available like rFactor which should let you configure it including deadzone and there are many mods available so even if the game wasn't quite perfect you could easily fix that with a mod.
@3do: ah i see, it just was a funny image in my brain playing the island or stadium modes with a wheel. For the slower modes it might work very well though.
I always found the game to work perfectly well with a keyboard and didn't really need a wheel especially the fast paced tracks. Other games i played though like DiRT, Rfactor and the like worked best with a wheel.
I liked the original game. Haven't played much though. I got in the beta for the next Trackmania (Ubisoft employee could freely sign up). I've yet to check it out. Think I might fire it up this weekend.
