In the last few years racing games have hit upon a renaissance, bringing out some spectacular simulation games that accurately portray the sensation of racing. Games like Project Cars, Assetto Corsa and DiRT Rally have raised the bar when it comes to lifelike racing masterpieces. But what if you don’t want the bar raised? What if instead you want to go skidding underneath the bar in a power slide the likes of which the internet has never seen before? Then, my friend, Trackmania Turbo could be for you….
Trackmania Turbo is what happens when you design a racing game based on the kind of 80s arcade racers where the laws of physics and realism don’t matter, and every aspect of the game was geared towards having fun. Gone are the ideas of racing lines and perfect gear shifts, and in their place is the ability to fly through the air, play tracks whilst upside down and drift around entire tracks with relative ease. All in all, Turbo is a game that’s simple to play, but at the same time it’s an insanely difficult control breaker.
Since the beta of the game originally launched up until recently, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the game. Its controls are easy to use with accelerate, brake and handbrake being pretty much the only real input you have, and most tracks are short and concise, taking around 30 seconds to complete. To get a decent score on a track is relatively easy as long as you don’t mess up too badly, but you have the ability to boost your ranking by trying the track again and getting a better time… this is when Turbo becomes a compelling game. When you’ve found a track that you like, there’s nothing better than racing it again and again, cutting seconds off your time and ultimately getting your ranking on the world leader boards higher and higher. Sometimes you even get the mind blowing feeling of gaining a track master medal for being one of the fastest, and when that happens it’s really worth all the hours of grinding a level.
While the feeling of being one of the best is amazing, the feeling of not being able to do a specific track or drive a particular car because of weird design choices or stupidly finicky controls is enough to make you stop playing altogether, especially when the game is based on a medal system where if you don’t get a specific number of medals then you don’t get to race the later levels. It’s so strange that a game with such responsive controls drops in two types of car (that you have to race as) that you’re constantly battling with to get straight after corners and seem to have wheels made out of grease on certain terrain.
Of course, with this being a Trackmania game there had to be a course editor mode so people can design their own Rune Goldberg inspired racetracks and upload them for everyone to play. Honestly, I didn’t spend much time designing, as even though it is a very robust and simple level designer, it just wasn’t for me. I instead had hours of fun downloading tracks and trying to work out exactly what I was supposed to be doing, playing the game as more of a puzzle racing game with online leader boards.
All in all there’s more in Trackmania Turbo to love than there is to hate, with adrenaline filled races that burst at the seams and mesh perfectly with the pounding soundtrack, and I did have hours of fun with it. But it is one of those games that as soon as you start having difficulty, everything after that becomes more and more frustrating, to the point where you will quit and walk away to take a moment for yourself. If you like arcade racers then I’d say go for Trackmania Turbo, if not then get DiRT Rally or wait for Assetto Corsa to come out for consoles.
Author – Hal, Plymouth store
