IntroImagine yourself as a five year old kid. You just got that super awesome toy, a racecar track with two lanes for christmas wich let you challenge your friends. The speed depends on how much power you give the car, if you gave it too much speed your car would jump out of the track while your friends car would roll over the finnish line and mock you for your stupid decision to speed up in the middle of a curve.
Now, this is you; Ten years later.. You got yourself a PC for christmas. You need games, but you're short on cash because you chose to buy fireworks for the money you got instead of games for your PC.
So.. What do you do? You simply download Trackmania: Nations Forever. It is a car racing game for your PC. And the best thing about this game is that it is free! You can also get this game for other platforms so google the game to see if it is available for your platform, i am not going to write about since i'm going to focus on Trackmania for PC. Now you're probably thinking: ''If it is free it can't possibly be great enough for more than 2-3 hours/days of fun.. ''
Well.. Check it out for yourself, here is a download link for the game:
http://www.filefront.com/10013754/TrackMania-Nations-Forever-Free-Full-Game/Track Mania Nations Forever, The basics
If you believe that this game is only worth 2-3 hours of fun you've just accomplished to fool yourself in epic manners. There is NO way you can't keep playing this game for another 10 minutes only to better your lap time by 0.5 seconds. Of course, if you hate fast paced driving action this isn't the game for you. It sure aint Gran Turismo 5 but it wasn't what the developers was aiming at either..
Well... In fact, they created the game for fun to a contest for a LAN party and it ended up being really popular. They also made a sequal but you got to pay for that version. I don't care about that either way because it's all about the freeware! If you want to support the game developers get Trackmania United and the awesome features that follows with it.
Game modes and tracksIf you haven't downloaded a skin for your ride (like.. A wheelchair, or a Skyline etc..) you are driving a custom formula 1 inspired racecar in your countries colors. So, what you want to do for a start is to click at the Solo Player button.
There different sets of skill levels for you to choose from. In order to play more tracks on the different skill levels you got to beat the target time on the previous maps first. Yeah, this game is all about you versus the clock.
The different maps/tracks are different from eachother. Some are incredible hard and long and it might be a pain in the ass to reach the finnish line while others are easy but hard to get a good time on.
There is basicly 2 different types of maps. Endurance (circuit) races with more than 1 lap and ''sprint'' maps. Forget about laps in the sprint maps, just get to the finnish line asap!
Some are puzzle based (but you probably got to download these). This means that you have to figure out a way to get through the checkpoints in order to reach the finnish line. Sometimes they might be hard to find so you probably want to sit down and think for a second to finally get it and get to the finnish line. I've literally played a map where you start at the front of the finnish line, but you can't finnish the race unless you've went through all of the checkpoints first, so yeah... Figure these ones out by yourself!
Last but not least you have the tracks that are based on pure luck and not really based on much skill. You might start with a bunch of speed boosters or something along those lines, then you proceed to hit a bump in the road and pray to your favourite god that your car will flip and hit one of the finnish lines that are randomly placed in the air. You mostly play tracks like these online on ''lolservers''.
This is basically pure luck but it's actually really fun to play. Specially if you play online with 50 other players doing their best to luckily place themselves on a pole position. These are often really creative as well.
Just look at this thing! That map started off with speed boosters as well!
There are a couple of other types of maps as well such as dirt tracks wich really puts your skill to a test. Play the game in single player mode or online to see what other map editors have created. Yeah, you can create your own map with the implemented Map Editor if you don't like the maps in the game, the maps you have downloaded or those you find online.. Or create something just for pure fun. You can send them to a friend or play against him over LAN and see if he can beat you on your own maps.
Some servers also let you send your map to the admins, if they like it they'll put it in the playlist over maps that can be played. Some people are really creative so put some work in this if you are going to put it on display for other players.
A screenshot of the map editor, i used 15 minutes to create this track for the review:
OnlineYep. It is what it is and i have already talked a little bit about it. Play on different tracks, do what you can to take down the internets best racers in a devastating race versus time to gain the pole position!
There are different servers in different regions of the world with various settings. Find the servers that you enjoy to play on and favourite them in order to access the servers directly from your favourite servers list. Go for a really great time to get on the local records list, or dedimania (global stat list on specific tracks) and have fun!
You can also join a clan and other stuff to your liking. Enjoy!
Subject: Trackmania Nations Forever Review (It's a free game & link included) 
Mon Jan 24, 2011 1:44 pm
