Trackmania 2

Trackmania 2 is a remake of the original Track Mania with reimagined environments and improved versions of the favourites. The most favourable environment; between Island; Coast; Stunt; Desert and stadium was the later free “Nations Forever” Stadium. It would be wrong, however, to assume it was the favourite because it was free. It was the favourite because it had the most extensive amount of track parts (except the underground) with the most developers (perhaps because it was free) and the best cars with the craziest tracks. Island featured an insanely fast car, to the point where tracks were stretched-out and bland. Coast featured a car with exaggerated diesel acceleration and cornering you’d find on a shopping trolley; a good thing the scenery was nice. Stunt was more of a skateboard park in a 4x4. Desert was tolerable but ruined by a car which flipped sideways under hard cornering. So in 2013, Nadeo decided to remake the Stadium environment; perhaps in a bid to push other, new, unknown environments, like canyon, into publicity.

The original Track Mania had amazing graphics to even today’s standards, so improving them would be difficult. The major graphic improvements in TM2 were, in my opinion; the wall-ride sections, which featured a grid-like construction; stadium terrains (grass, water) and their interaction with vehicles; damage, which wasn’t a feature at all before, and finally, some smaller details pertaining to lighting. Upon the graphics was the addition of underground building blocks for stadium, which every other environment previously featured. These sections are nice, but nothing fantastic or ground-breaking.

As this game is based on community creation, whether that be tracks or cars, it would be worth mentioning the community developments. During the final hours of the original, the game was sadly destroyed by ‘Free’ servers. This new server system prevented non-full-game owners from joining their clan’s, or any other, server and instead forced them to join dedicated Nadeo ran servers. This not only tore apart communities within the game, but destroyed other unusual servers which pushed a different view onto the game’s mechanics. This would include FUN.LOL servers, which gave a cryptic lean towards gaining the fastest time, and maze tracks which involved shimmying across pipes delicately to reach checkpoints. These abstract rules and game-play ideas were sadly lost in the second translation. Thus legendary developers and artists, such as HotSeason AKA Summer of DLR, left the community; leaving the supply of great tracks at an all-time low. With a game built with creation in mind, the community is what makes the game: Nadeo killed its second rendition off before it was even born.

The original: 9.3 – The block construction system was simple yet had its limitations, this was later resolved by a modification which was known as “block mixing”. Track Mania 2 still does not allow this and no modification has been made as of yet to facilitate this.

Track Mania 2 stadium: 3.0 – I score this very low as there is nothing innovative about this new version compared to the last and Nadeo’s attempts to kill off the last game and force people to join their new iteration is a shame.