By far one of the best stunt track driving games on the market, even with a sequel out this is still more than worth your time due to the loads of unique content it contains.

Each of the seven car types offer a distinct feel to their speed, handling, and physics, as well as their respective tracks having unique locales and obstacles, basically giving you seven different stunt racers in a single package.

While the Stadium car is basically identical to its Trackmania 2 counterpart, it still has a ton of tracks specific to this version, and the other six car types all offer their own unique physics and environments that none of the T2 cars replicate. With 42 included tracks per car type, plus an additional 65-track campaign for Stadium, as well as the extra Platform, Stunt, and Puzzle levels, you've got a massive package of tracks to challenge your driving skills with.

There's also some kind of in-game browser for downloading user-created tracks, but I ultimately found it incredibly dated and clunky to use. If you plan on going all-in and downloading a bunch of user tracks, I recommend just playing TM2, as it just uses the Steam Workshop.

The included tracks ramp up in challenge at just the right rate, and time medals are lenient enough so as to not require perfection while still rewarding practice and skill. However, players less interested in gold-medaling each track may be a bit disappointed to find that to unlock the hardest tracks, you need to gold previous tracks. There's thankfully an unlock all cheat, but just tying unlocks to completing the previous track would've been quite a bit simpler.

Also, while only a small gripe, the camera for the Island and Bay cars has a bad tendency of tilting your perspective while making a wide turn, which can be a bit disorienting. While you'll be driving straight forward in relation to the camera, you'll actually be tilted quite a bit in relation to the road. Thankfully, it's something you can get used to with practice, though I'm puzzled as to why it was programmed like this to begin with.

Finally, Stadium levels suffer from horrendous load times due to the fact that they use pre-baked shadows, but don't actually calculate them until you load the stage for the first time. Even when using a CPU and GPU that massively outclass the game's requirments, I found my load times for Stadium levels in excess of 1-2 minutes if I didn't cancel the shadow-mapping process.

All-in-all, if you're looking for a time trial based stunt track driver, then in spite of its odd technical issues you'll come away very satisfied with Trackmania, and this version offers a wonderfully unique and challenging experience that not even the sequel can fully replicate.

8.6/10

Follow my Curator to be kept up on all my reviews, including stuff I ghost-write through Family Share!

Check out the discussions on my Group if you wanna see my reviews of non-steam games, suggest what I should play next, or to yell at me for calling your favorite game bad!

By far one of the best stunt track driving games on the market, even with a sequel out this is still more than worth your time due to the loads of unique content it contains. Each of the seven car types offer a distinct feel to their speed, handling, and physics, as well as their respective tracks having unique locales and obstacles, basically giving you seven different stunt racers in a single package. While the Stadium car is basically identical to its Trackmania 2 counterpart, it still has a ton of tracks specific to this version, and the other six car types all offer their own unique physics and environments that none of the T2 cars replicate. With 42 included tracks per car type, plus an additional 65-track campaign for Stadium, as well as the extra Platform, Stunt, and Puzzle levels, you've got a massive package of tracks to challenge your driving skills with. There's also some kind of in-game browser for downloading user-created tracks, but I ultimately found it incredibly dated and clunky to use. If you plan on going all-in and downloading a bunch of user tracks, I recommend just playing TM2, as it just uses the Steam Workshop. The included tracks ramp up in challenge at just the right rate, and time medals are lenient enough so as to not require perfection while still rewarding practice and skill. However, players less interested in gold-medaling each track may be a bit disappointed to find that to unlock the hardest tracks, you need to gold previous tracks. There's thankfully an unlock all cheat, but just tying unlocks to completing the previous track would've been quite a bit simpler. Also, while only a small gripe, the camera for the Island and Bay cars has a bad tendency of tilting your perspective while making a wide turn, which can be a bit disorienting. While you'll be driving straight forward in relation to the camera, you'll actually be tilted quite a bit in relation to the road. Thankfully, it's something you can get used to with practice, though I'm puzzled as to why it was programmed like this to begin with. Finally, Stadium levels suffer from horrendous load times due to the fact that they use pre-baked shadows, but don't actually calculate them until you load the stage for the first time. Even when using a CPU and GPU that massively outclass the game's requirments, I found my load times for Stadium levels in excess of 1-2 minutes if I didn't cancel the shadow-mapping process. All-in-all, if you're looking for a time trial based stunt track driver, then in spite of its odd technical issues you'll come away very satisfied with Trackmania, and this version offers a wonderfully unique and challenging experience that not even the sequel can fully replicate. 8.6/10 Follow my [url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31984244/]Curator[/url] to be kept up on all my reviews, including stuff I ghost-write through Family Share! Check out the discussions on my [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/xorphreviewsthings]Group[/url] if you wanna see my reviews of non-steam games, suggest what I should play next, or to yell at me for calling your favorite game bad!