TylerM – Tyler Menezes

A lot of people I know like the game TrackMania. I’ve hosted TrackMania fan sites before. Yet before last week I had yet to actually play the game. However, I was a little bored and looking for things to write about here, so I decided to get the demo. Here’s my top reasons you should buy something other than TrackMania:

1. It’s more difficult then is fun, right from the start

   I enjoy difficulty in games, but TrackMania takes the concept way too far. To begin with, immediately after starting the game, I was provided with an incredibly difficult challenge. Now, I would no longer say it was hard, but typically games at least teach you how to play before putting you in a real win/loose situation.

   Portal, for example, spends the first 5 or 10 levels just teaching the players how to play; Audiosurf asks the player if they want to try a tutorial. Trackmania just puts you in a race right off, and it’s not even a specifically easy one.

   I got the hang of it, eventually, but it’s kind of odd being handed control of a car with no indication of how the controls work and then being told to try to win, ready. . . GO! There’s not really even a clear definition of how to win at the start, you’re kind of shown a platform with a giant gate. It’s kind of obvious you’re supposed to get to the gate, but given the physics involved in the first level it’s a bad way to start.

2. When you start playing the harder levels, they’re near impossible

   Okay, so eventually I got the hang of the controls, and passed all of the easy and medium levels. However, the hard levels fall just short of impossible. It’s been my observation that in all races, even the Endurance races (most races are less than a minute, whereas Endurance races can last 5 or more), winning a Silver medal (required to advance) means not touching a wall or letting go of the “forward” key. Ever.

   These are races that can last up to 7 or 8 minutes. 7 or 8 minutes without touching a wall, when you’re on a narrow track going 300+ miles per hour. More times than I can count I was more than 90% done, only to touch a wall, turn too sharply, or make some other small mistake, thereby being overtaken by the opponent. It’s crazy. The type of people that play this game are the type that don’t mind spend 2 hours trying to clear a 7 minute race.

   And I don’t even want to mention trying to get a Gold medal on higher levels!

3. It’s unrealistic.

   Don’t try to tell me it is, because it’s not. Let me give you an example, I got my car up to 323 miles per hour (I’ve gotten up to 900 before, that’s not all too realistic, either). Then I decelerated back to stopping. (See screenshots.)

   

   In just under 6 seconds. You would be at decelerating 53.3 miles per second, or about 85,778 meters per second according to Google. That’s a tremendous amount of force. Ignoring the huge forces on both the car and the driver, what kind of breaks can stop this fast?!

   Maybe it’s not supposed to be really realistic. Okay, it’s not supposed to be really realistic. But if you’re going to obey some basic laws of the universe, why not take the effort to make the rest of them at least partially realistic. I wasn’t going into this thing looking for hyper-realism, but that’s way off, even for this type of game, in my opinion.

Honestly, I had 5 reasons planned. I think you get the idea with these three alone, though.(Plus I have to go write a CMS and Wordpress is acting strange today.) Bottom line: Don’t buy this game. If you’re looking for something good, I just downloaded Audiosurf and it’s amazing.