trackmania
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Yup, Trackmania is trackmania.
If you like trackmania you’ll probably like Trackmania. The only variable here is the addition of floors with different levels of traction and some modifier pads that cause effects when you drive over them, such as boosting your speed, disabling steering or your engine, or make you go in slow motion. There’s some sort of flight mode too a track can activate when you hit a jump that gives you more horizontal control than normal. I think this can create a completely new flavor of Trackmania but there’s nothing stopping people from creating tracks without the new stuff if you prefer the older Trackmania sensibilities.
There are three tiers of purchase for this game. All tiers get the 25 training courses that gradually introduce you to mechanics. Then the F2P tier gives you access to the current 25 tracks of the season and an “Arcade Mode” that cycles through random maps, including player created maps.
The regular tier is $10 to get you the entire year’s worth of content, so it’s basically like the year pass. You get all 100 new tracks (25 per season) and access to Clubs, which i think are basically the player servers that let you play on player created tracks. You also get access to the track creator.
The high tier is $30 for a year which gets you advanced Club/Server creation features and car customization, so I guess it’s only if you’re really into the social features or want to run groups and events and stuff.
I think if you’re casual about it the free tier is enough. It’s a game about playing the same track over and over for hours while watching ghosts play alongside you, everyone trying to get better times. $10 for the regular tier really isn’t that bad even if the messaging is kind of weird. I recall hearing somewhere that despite it sounding like a yearly subscription, Ubisoft would prefer you think of it as re-buying the game each year. Because apparently that’s better? $30 seems like something only for hardcore trackmania heads.
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Also since my username is pooglywoogly my car is labeled as the POO 01.
Club/server browsing sucks because you just get this big grid of icons instead of any details or meaningful sorting options. I guess this is the consolization of UI but it’s not a great UI for browsing.
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did tim design these menus
I love Trackmania Stadium. There’s nothing like joining a server and just. chilling there, time attacking with all these people together, listening to the server’s playlist. you don’t even need a layer of interaction above this. just this extremely minimal social presence is enough. Are all the maps from other Trackmanias easily porteable or do people have to remake them one by one? I think I’ll wait a while until people make a bunch of tracks for this new Trackmania and join.
I think they’re using a different set of pieces, so new tracks have to be made.
I’m 5 tracks away from getting gold in every Trackmania Turbo track. I’ve got something like 20 track master medals but I’m very skeptical I’ll ever be able to get them all.
Played this new Trackmania last night and I’m enjoying it so far, but the menus leave something to be desired!
ICE IS DIFFICULT TO DRIVE ON
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I accidentally got a gold on my first attempt at the ice tutorial level. As with all tutorial levels you don’t know what a thing is until you drive on it for the first time, so as I struggled to control my car on the slippery ice I somehow pulled off a perfect drift into the finish line. I didn’t realize what was going on until afterwards because it honestly just look like a white race track more than it does an ice road. Maybe it’s supposed to be like the floor of a hockey rink?
What’s reactor up/down do? Is that changing your max speed?
I think reactor up/down push your car in those directions relative to your current orientation. So reactor down keeps on you on the road (or lets you drive upside down if you slowly curve your way there), while reactor up acts sort of like a hovercraft pushing you up from the road.
Oh, huh. Is it like a one time nudge or is it a constant effect unless you drive over a deactivator or a reset?
Constant effect. It resets on deactivators and after a certain amount of time.
Trackmania has the tools to be a weirder, wackier trackmania. There’s nothing stopping people from just making regular tracks but I think having the tools to do something new is good, even if these new mechanics are varied and take some learning to handle them.
This is one of the simplest pleasures in gaming and it will always confuse me as to why Shootmania was a regular arena shooter instead of another social time trial game except with target shooting or something. Like an entire game of those COD and Titanfall style tutorial areas that everyone seems to love.
Shootmania fucking rules though.
Oh did it? I thought it was just instagib Quake, in which case I could go play quake I guess.
I had never even heard of Shootmania but it does look cool. It looks like a dead game though which is a shame, I wish I’d tried it before.
Definitely wasn’t (only) instagib or Quake! The main weapon had travel time, no AOE, and it took three shots to kill someone. You got other weapons by standing on certain terrain. The movement system had this interesting momentum and holding space in the air would make you glide and gain speed.
What you’re describing (Titanfall timetrials) absolutely DID exist in the game – there were servers dedicated to going fast and movement tricks, where the goal was just to get to the end in the fastest time possible.
One of modes I had the most fun with was an asymmetrical mode in rounds of attack / defense. It was a 3 v 3 mode: one team of 3 would be on defense and given the normal weapon (the one with travel time). On offense, only 1 member of the team would play at a time (in a rotation) and they were given an instagib laser gun. The attacker would try to kill all 3 defenders or capture a point on the map within a certain time limit. It was very tense on both sides, and it’s actually super fun in a multiplayer game to just cheer one of your friends on as they take on all 3 of the opponents.
Shootmania was also one of the first game to have a an official battle royale mode (well before they got super popular). It was simplistic but I found it very engaging and novel at the time.
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There’s a server called LOL MAPS that has some good gimmick maps and make for good practice on the new mechanics.