Trackmania 2: the prettiest racing game to date? Did I just say that?
Wait... who am I?
Firstly, allow myself to introduce myself. My name's Hamish and I'm joining the guys here at Polycount to help keep our awesome readers up to date with what's happening in and around the games industry. I'm your typical-geek generalist from Auckland, New Zealand but I'm moving up to North America in the coming months to be closer to the action. That, and the Hobbit's here are starting to get aggressive - it's time to get out.
The post title doesn't read "my life story", so I'll get to the point. Trackmania 2 has released some beautiful new media that's sure to get your inner (or outer) art geek excited. Nadeo have done a slick job with this game and it sort of reminds me of the good ol' Destruction Derby on Playstation - but a zillion times better.
Take a look at the screens and tell me they aren't awesome (Ed. - and why they insist on not loading with Lightbox!)
A lot of people had gripes about Gran Turismo 5 in that the environments could, at times, be too sparse, the non-premium cars lacked detail and the concept of damage seemed to be an afterthought. It looks like Trackmania 2 has gone to town (at least graphically) on the damage side of things and the environments look spectacular - I can't wait to see some gameplay footage and find out if the real thing matches up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_-Cq7NgkwQ
So, what do you guys reckon? Does a somewhat 'light-hearted' racing game like Trackmania 2 give a purists game like Gran Turismo 5 a run for its money?
Replies
trackmania succeeds to bring unending addiction and nearly infinite replayability. all this thanks to it's continued support for it's dedicated community. in combination with that, it also charges next to nothing or nothing at all to play the game, which in turn makes sure the community keeps growing. add to that the amazing graphics for an online game, and you've got what I consider to be a game to be reckoned with by the big players.
Goddamn this looks good, my money is yooooours!
@Justin_Meisse: it's like the opposite: in Burnout you have to crash everything and drive the most insanely you can, but in Trackmania the main target is to get the best time: every corner has its own strategy, you have to split milliseconds and be maniacally precise in order to get beat other players. And there aren't collisions between cars, because everyone must have the possibility to get the perfect time without interferences.
No need to say that playing it offline is like... Like... I don't know, you simply must play it online. :P
Trackmania 2 will be the first step, but Shootmania is incoming :-)))
That's good news for shootmania then !!