October 3, 2024

Trackmania Turbo is an upcoming arcade racing game, developed by Ubisoft Nadeo. Although this isn’t our full review, I’ve had the chance to test the game out a bit and would like to share what I think about the game. Review is based on the PC version of the game played with a controller. 

Combine arcade, racing cars and high speeds with each other and you have the game Trackmania Turbo. Trackmania is less focused on real racing, but instead emphasizes on short crazy stunt tracks and high speed neck to neck trials of several cars racing around the track. 

Currently Trackmania turbo comes with 4 distinctive environments : Canyon Grand Drift, Valley Down And Dirty, Lagoon Rollercoaster and The International Stadium. Each environment requires different driving styles and strategies in order to be mastered, and each environment offers a vastly different type of gameplay.Take for example  Valley Down And Dirty – it’s got a lot of jumps and requires a lot of air control if you don’t want to crash into the trees. On the other hand the Canyon Grand Drift Environment has – you guessed it right : a lot of drifting and requires tight control over the road while having limited air time.

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The driving mechanics are solid and the physics feel right – not too grounded but not too over the top, and the controls feel simple yet responsive allowing for frustration-less sessions.

The campaign offers 200 tracks divided across the 4 aforementioned environments and has 5 difficulty tiers : White, Green, Blue, Red and Black and in order to progress a specific number of medals has to be obtained. While the races may be completed in under a few minutes, grabbing gold medals requires mastery over the track.  The difficulty curve is quite smooth with earlier tracks being more easier to manage and allowing new player to get their hands set in preparation of some of the crazier races ahead.

Although some of the levels tend to be a lot harder than the others, it was nowhere rage inducing or caused me any frustration. It was a huge challenge to finish the race, but fortunately it never got so bad that I had to throw my controller at my monitor, instead the challenges were fun and I enjoyed every moment working my way towards those sweet medals . It is also possible to customise your car and you can paint patterns unlocked through your hard earned medals. This provides the extra motivation to do a level just a little better so you can get everything.

Another really unique feature is Double Driver, where two players must move synchronously to control the same car. Trackmania Turbo includes several other modes that we’ll be covering in depth for the full review. The track maker makes a return now called Track Builder, which allows players to make their own road creations and share your tracks with other players all over the world, potentially allowing almost infinite tracks with different set pieces.

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You can also head online for the game’s 100 player multiplayer mode. Yes, 100 players, racing together. There’s also local multiplayer featuring hotseat mode where you can pass the controller around and take a shot at beating each others high scores or you could also play in split screen allowing upto 4 player to play together locally, just like the good old days. There’s a host of other secret modes waiting to be unlocked.

Graphically the game deserves a compliment, and the cars retain the overall arcade-ish atmosphere present in the game. The textures are crisp and well done. I did not encounter any bugs throughout the time I spent playing the game, which is a huge thumps up from my side.

Overall Trackmania Turbo is a solid new entry to the franchise and is a breath of fresh air in the racing genre. While games like Need For Speed drift between the lines of arcade and simulator and games like Project Cards being hardcore racing simulator, Trackmania Turbo breaks across the line and moves on full throttle ahead towards the arcade side.

Our full fledged review along with a final score will be out on 25th March.

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