While looking round for some free entertainment I came across a great arcade racing sim called ‘Track Mania Nations’ over at TrackMania.com – free to download and play.
Imagine, if you will, the classic Stunt Car Racer from the Amiga days, but with massive updated graphics and F1-style cars instead of old bangers. Extend the race types to include acrobatics, speed races and obstacle courses and you’ve got Track Mania. The full version includes different scenes and weather conditions as well as cars, but the free version is worthy of your bandwidth.
The ‘Nations’ bit of the game title refers to the fact that there are millions of people all around the world competing. You can challenge people online or play solo, and can check your Global, Country and Regional rank. I’m currently in the top 15,000 in England, apparently, or maybe it was Britain as a whole. I don’t actually know if that’s any good.
In the solo game there are no other car on the track as such, but you do see the current Medal-winning performance running alongside you (It’s a ghost car so it can’t ram you off the track) as well as your own fastest performance, so you can see where you need to adjust your driving to win. Racing lines are very important but there’s a little bit of luck involved as well, especially on rough ground.
Most of the races are single-lap affairs that only last 30 seconds or so and they increase in difficulty as you progress, though there are a couple that seem out of place in the learning curve. Occasionally you’ll find a track where it seems impossible to meet the Gold Medal time, which brings me to the games only major fault.
If there’s one thing that lets Track Mania down it’s the fact that the Gold Medal times – the runs you have to beat to get gold – are frustratingly difficult. Touch the wall once, even the gentlest of kisses, and your ‘opponent’ will disappear off into the distance.
That said, perseverance pays dividends and can propel you up the Global Rankings 10,000 places at a time for every medal you win.
The graphics are simply stunning and very quick. 1600×1200 on an nVidia 6600 and a 2GHz AMD CPU looks absolutely gorgeous with no slowdown. The only thing missing from the game is crash damage when you inevitably get too excited and slam into a wall, pillar or miss the track completely – though the water effects make up for the latter.
If I can convince others to get it installed and give it a whirl I’ll give the multiplayer a try as well – it can only get better!