TrackMania is a free racing game, in which you can play by yourself for badges or challenge people online. The graphics and controls are well done and with user made tracks and a lot of imagination, this game can be a very enjoyable experience for anyone into cars or racing.

Single player mode is all about badges. You can gain bronze, silver, or gold by beating preset times in various tracks. While you load up your first track, you will quickly learn the controls. The arrow keys will be your primary racing utilities; while I hoped for the ability to use a controller, the arrow keys functioned well. If you’ve played any racing games previously then you will be picking up badges in no time. The control is smooth and the graphics are great.

When you decide to move to multiplayer, you’ll find the tracks a lot more imaginative. The object in each track is to get the best time, but the play is a bit different then you would expect. Instead of just battling around the track running into each other, each player is essentially a ghost car, who can restart himself at the beginning of the level at any time. It can get relatively annoying when there are a cluster of ghost cars around you and an option to turn them off would have been nice; although, sometimes ghost cars were helpful if you were able to watch how they got over portions of the map you were struggling with.

The tracks i played were fun and also greatly frustrating. While you enjoy the occasional loopty loop, or driving horizontally, these lost their luster after a short while. The main problem with a lot of the maps is, if you mess up on one portion and you respawn, typically you won’t be able to gather enough speed to make it over whatever obstacle happens to be in your way. A lot of tracks were just hard to finish, let alone place in a good time. Knowing each track by heart is a must if you want to place anywhere in the top 3 finishers. While this does reward hardcore players, it might detract from people who just want to casually play and not learn every tracks intricacies.

TrackMania should be the standard for free games. Just because you tag yourself as “free,” doesn’t mean you should be a piece of shit. No one should ever have to say, “oh well it’s free.” No, fuck that! Take some pride in your games, developers! Free games should not be piles of shit. TrackMania proves that free games can be well made and fun, so go give it a shot!

TrackMania.com