Trackmania DS
Score: 70% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: Atlus Developer: Firebrand Games Limited Media: Cartridge/1 Players: 1 - 8 Genre: Racing/ Editor/ Racing (Arcade)
Graphics & Sound: Trackmania DS brings a new face to Nintendo, but one well known to fans of this massive online game. Massive to the point that we might be safe in referring to the Trackmania "movement" as more than just a normal fan base. After all, Trackmania "United" and "Nations" have almost four million (3.6 million at the beginning of 2009, but what's a few hundred thousand more or less) registered players! Unfortunately for those hoping to hit that four million mark, much of the Trackmania hype may be lost on gamers steeled by similar DS titles. GRID and Race Driver: Create & Race will be the standards against which Trackmania DS is measured. In the pros column for Trackmania DS is speed. This is a title where everything moves quickly and there's no delay waiting for loading screens. The scaled-back interface keeps your eyes on the road ahead, which is important considering the amount of technical driving you'll need to do in order to pull out a gold medal. The tracks are not greatly adorned and can have as many or as few competitors on them as you choose. Racing against the gold-medal pacer car is all that really matters, and when you're in the lead, it's a bit lonely. There isn't much eye candy around the track. The Trackmania stock-in-trade is racing outrageous "couldn't exist in real life" tracks, which helps it stand out against racing games that clutter the track with eye candy, but feature the same basic track geometry we've seen a million times before. This game's true nature is pedal-to-the-metal racing with a technical focus. There are several unique but forgettable musical themes woven into each of the game's stages that sound vaguely related to the place setting. Racing on the Desert tracks, for instance, carries with it some kind of rambling, twangy zydeco tune that will have you stabbing at the volume controls within a few heartbeats of starting a race. The visual shortcomings of Trackmania DS may just be the DS hitting its practical limit for graphics. Compared to the version of Trackmania that fans have been playing online, this looks like a tech demo. DS veterans will find the interface on par with most other racing games released in the last year, but there's certainly nothing here to write home about from a presentation standpoint. Most disappointing is some seriously generic design for the vehicles. Other than livery options, there's exactly one type of vehicle per stage, for a grand total of three vehicle styles. Lack of variety wouldn't be a deal-breaker if the vehicles fell less in the Kart Racing school of design...
Gameplay: Navigating the various ways to get your game on in Trackmania DS is unnecessarily complicated. Players are asked to "buy" their way through the game, opening up tracks and liveries and editor parts by spending credits gained from successful race sessions. Progression through skillful racing is nothing new in a game of this type, but Trackmania DS forces you to be too involved in the details. Open up the next track already! As it stands, you'll reach a roadblock during every stage that forces you to back out of the racing, enter the shop, buy the next track in the series, exit the shop, then finally navigate back through the selected stage to your new track. Using credits for liveries or editor components is smart, but the track-purchase mechanic is a bomb. There are three stages in Trackmania DS: Stadium, Desert, and Rally. Each stage contains a unique vehicle type with multiple liveries. In Solo Mode, you'll have the option at first to race in a stage of your choosing, or just hit Quick Race to dive into the action in any stage. Once you've succeeded in Race Mode, you'll want to move into Platform Mode. This is a more technical race challenge, similar to something like the Autocross events run in the real world. Puzzle and Custom Modes let you experience the final variations in Solo play. Puzzle is purely technical racing that requires you to edit a custom track and then race the track's checkpoints. Custom is just as it sounds, letting you race any of the user-generated content you've saved or traded. For players that may not get much use out of Editor Mode, Multiplayer has something for everyone. Hotseat is a pass-around mode for up to eight players, competing for the highest score. Multi- or Single-Card play is available, plus the option to pass custom tracks between your DS and a friend's system for competition. A separate option to just send a track without launching a competition is available in the editor. Editor Mode is a necessary addition, since this game wouldn't make the cut purely on the strength of its racing action. We've seen editors in this format previously, and Trackmania DS is every bit as good in this respect as its competition. The ability to create some over-the-top, radical track designs is a big plus, and something not featured in other games that strive for a more realistic racing environment. Using the stylus has its ups and downs, compared to designing with a full keyboard and a mouse as PC users have done now for years. At least from an apples-to-apples perspective, Trackmania DS fits nicely into the grooved track carved by games like Race Driver: Create & Race.
Difficulty: Trackmania DS features four levels of difficulty, from Practice to Extreme. Easy, Medium, and Hard are sandwiched in there as well. The game feels like a compilation of ghost runs, since you can't bump into other cars during the race. In any of the tracks, you'll have the option to pace against the gold, silver, or bronze vehicle; you can choose to display all of them on the track if you prefer. Removing the A.I. behind the racing and the feeling of contact that comes with a more visceral racing title takes Trackmania DS into different territory than its competition. Solo Mode is basically a proving ground for you to go out and race with friends. Not being able to race online is a major omission, since the original game was literally built on this model. After playing through the variations in Solo Mode, you'll be ready for more variety in your competitors. It's nice that there are several ways to dial in the difficulty, since you are awarded points to spend in the store ("coppers") based on your performance against the benchmark time attached to each track. Easy difficulty will be plenty accessible, even to racing newbies.
Game Mechanics: The controls are responsive, and there are enough twists and curves that tight controls really matter. Physics in the game are a bit bouncy, making it more of an art than a science when you take a jump or a tight curve. There's no customization available for vehicles, branding Trackmania DS as more of an Arcade or Kart title than anything striving for realism. The vehicles can be differentiated in terms of how they maneuver, their acceleration, and top speed. This would be great, except you're locked into one vehicle type per stage. No options for tweaking things under the hood puts all focus on navigating the sometimes extreme track designs. All the customization mojo went into the editing tools, as evidenced by the wide range of new parts and pieces you can purchase as upgrades while racing. Having to race the same tracks again and again to win points for upgrades is tedious, but required at times. Trackmania DS is fine as an arcade racing game, but doesn't make the grade as anything more and doesn't provide added value for DS owners that already purchased copies of GRID or Race Driver: Create & Race. Being late to the party is fine for high society, but doesn't do much for games... Fans of the online PC-based version of Trackmania will likely find this too watered-down and rough looking for their tastes. Perhaps Trackmania DS will find an audience, but with the wealth of similar and superior titles on the market recently, it's hard to know where that audience exists.
-Fridtjof, GameVortex Communications AKA Matt Paddock
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