Trackmania Turbo review
When all that separates you from gold is a bump in the road, you will likely get frustrated after twenty or so attempts and close the lid, put down your DS and walk away. I tried this a few times, but found no matter how frustrated I got with some of the later tracks that I was back within ten or so minutes having yet another go until I finally got that medal.
As you might guess from the intro, Trackmania Turbo (TT) gets more frustrating as you get higher up the mountainous difficulty curve. But the feeling of needing to try again is addictive. I found the only way I could stop playing for a day was when I had mastered the track I was on.
I then began trying to think of when I was last addicted to a ‘just-one-more-go’ game, and could only think of Trials HD on XBLA, where it makes sense. It seems the more addictive games come in the form of a handful of pre-created tracks and a track editor.
With TT you get just four environments and four different car types. Stadium, Coast, Snow and Island all offer a unique driving and track experience which tweaks the type of driving you will have to master. For example you get a higher sense of precision and ease from the Stadium tracks with its F1 car, while Coast will provide a high octane feel of street racing meets OutRun. Snow is slower but has more claustrophobic tracks requiring a higher level of precision, and the final choice of Island needs a more Rally style of racing and are all set in a tropical environment.
The key component in TT that sets itself aside from other racing games is its over-the-top tracks. It uses loop-de-loops and corkscrew turns amongst other unusual track pieces that you yourself can use in the track editor to master racing in, through, and around.
With the eighty plus pre-made tracks, you might be surprised to learn at first that some tracks can quite literally be completed in the amount of time it took the announcer from Sega’s Daytona to actually finish saying that iconic arcade title. You should be able to complete all if not a vast majority of tracks in under a minute.
But this is where that addiction can start to get the better of you. If you just beat a time but still messed up at some point, you could improve your time even above a gold medal and earn an editor medal. These are pretty hard to earn. I’ve only earned two which leads me to think you simply need to beat the track creator’s time. Considering there are more hardcore completionists when it comes to racing games than I, getting these will sap even more hours out of you.
You may be forgiven for thinking that a good handful of tracks and a track editor for your own creative amusement would be the whole package here, but no. There is also the Platform/Puzzle mode. You read that correctly, a racing game which has a puzzle/platforming section, and it’s just as addictive as everything else in the game. While time is a factor in the completion of these sections, it’s more about doing each one flawlessly.
Each of these platforming tracks comes with its own set of unique challenges from maintaining speed to precision driving or even aiming off jumps. You can end up finding yourself spending more time than you might originally have planned.
So now it comes to the feature that Trackmania originally became infamous for – its track editor. There are many like it I suppose, but a stylus drag and drop mechanic while using the buttons to tweak the rotation of a track piece feels natural and can cause you to end up building a fun and entertaining track in a matter of minutes. Sadly though the environment feels a little limited in terms of space, as it seems you can’t build big massive tracks or platforming tracks which take three or more minutes to complete. Everything available to you means you can either develop a pretty decent ground based track, or a hybrid race track combined with a rollercoaster ride, and this is the key element of TT. You may take a good few days going for gold medals, flawlessly going through platforming puzzles, or even trying to beat your best time. But you will always return to mess around with the track editor once you learn how to use it.
For a bus pass wielding racing game fan, TT should already be in your cartridge slot. If not you need to go out and get this fun, slightly frustrating, yet highly addictive racer for your DS. Just do me a favour and don’t blame me if you miss your bus having ‘one-more-go.’
