4.13.2011

Trackmania Nations Forever

Image courtesy Nadeo
If you've ever played a racing title and thought "I can make a better track then that" this is your chance to prove it. Not only is Trackmania Nations Forever a free excuse to send your car flipping and spinning through ramps, loops and half-pipes courtesy of Nadeo, it's also a full set of track building tools ready for you to build your own crazy course.

The Trackmania series has been around for a while and it holds much closer to it's name then most other titles. You won't find yourself choosing between dozens of cars with different handling and precision, and you won't find yourself worrying about damage either. You don't even have to worry about running into other racers. No, what Trackmania will have you worrying about is the track itself. Trackmania's courses can border on the absurd, with spirals, spins, flips, jumps and more chaos then a pinball board. Case in point, a pinball level would be perfectly suited to Trackmania.



Which is just as well because if I feel like it I can build one. Trackmania's largest draw next to it's crazy levels is a fairly easy to use trackbuilding tool set that allows you to build almost any sort of course. In fact, every single course that the game comes preloaded with has been built with the games track editor. So if you see it, you can build it.

Nations Forever is also highly mod friendly. Dragging and dropping files into folders is all the work you'll need to do in order to add new cars and tracks, so if the default car doesn't suit you, you're sure to find one that does, whether that be a monster truck or a hovercraft.

Online play is a large draw of Nations Forever. There are always servers running (most of them stunt or drag races) with people racing from all over the world, and dropping in and out of races is a fun and easy experience. It may take a few tries to get used to the set-up, but once you do you'll be racing away online in no time.

Nations Forever isn't the ultimate racing title. The environment number is limited to one (a large stadium) so you'll get used to seeing the same scenery every race. Only having one type of car (no matter what it looks like) can get a little old after a while. But crud, the game is free.


You can get your copy here.

1 comment:

OneBoot said...

Hey, I've played this before! My brother discovered it one day, and we had all sorts of fun making the craziest tracks, then trying each other's tracks out. It was a blast. :D

Huzzah!
--OneBoot LD