2256: TrackMania Turbo Demo Impressions

Those who know me well will know that I’ve been a huge fan of the TrackMania series since the original release of TrackMania United, and have spent many hours on the various updates to United and the eventual follow-ups TrackMania 2 Canyon, Valley and Stadium. So it was with some excitement that I realised that the next official sequel, TrackMania Turbo, was releasing this week, though I was torn on whether to pick it up for console (PS4, in my case) or PC, which has traditionally been the home of TrackMania.

After playing the PS4 demo for a bit this evening, I think I’m going to grab the PS4 version. I’m very impressed with how at home it feels on console — much of the clunkiness of the PC versions, particularly in the menus, has been tidied up considerably, making it much more controller-friendly, and the addition of a variety of local multiplayer modes makes it eminently suitable for console play. It, so far, seems to be a highly polished product, which addresses what has always been my main criticism of the series as a whole: the fact that in terms of gameplay, it is wonderful, but in terms of interface and user-friendliness, it has traditionally been a ridiculous mess, only made worse by the gazillions of mods server operators apply to their custom dedicated servers, making the game screen more complicated than your average MMO come raid time.

PC players on Steam seem to be a bit salty that TrackMania Turbo has stripped out a number of features they’ve come to take for granted: specifically, the ability for players to run their own dedicated servers and install gajillions of mods that make players’ screens look more complicated than your average MMO come raid time. And while this is a bit of a shame from the perspective of the game’s flexibility — something that TrackMania has always prided itself on — I don’t think it’s going to hurt the complete package, and in fact it may well be good for the series as a whole. TrackMania Turbo will serve as the friendly face of TrackMania, in other words, while the truly hardcore still have United and TrackMania 2 to play and mod to their heart’s content. Both of those games are still a hell of a lot of fun to play, after all — and surprisingly good looking, to boot, especially considering their age.

But what of TrackMania Turbo then? How does it shape up compared to its illustrious, if clunky, predecessors? Judging from the five tracks available in the demo, extremely favourably. In fact, if the whole game handles in the way those early tracks do, I’m confident that it will become a new favourite arcade racer.

The thing I like the most is the unabashedly arcadey handling. We’re talking Ridge Racer-tier drifting here: release the accelerator, steer around a corner and slam the gas back on and you’re going sideways. Hit the brakes and you’ll find yourself in an even tighter drift, allowing you to get around even the most ridiculous of corners without losing anywhere near as much speed as if you’d have to drive “properly” like in boring driving sims.

The game screen, sans custom mod clutter, is clean, clear and offers ample feedback on your performance as you play, including split times, worldwide and regional rankings, and fun little extras like arcade-style counters showing how far you’ve jumped or drifted for — a nice addition that gives the game a very “Sega” feel.

I was debating whether or not I wanted to grab the game today. Playing those five tracks in the demo has made me quite happy to pick it up, though; I can see it being a whole lot of fun, and I hope it’s a big success, helping to show console players the joy of this wonderfully silly but skillful and creative series.