Post edited 20:22 – Sep 19th 2011 by Ti1t

Hey guys…. I've been watching a load of video's for this game today at work (lunchtime of course) and i was getting seriously tempted to play. I used to play the original trackmania game which was an FreeTP and really enjoyed it. That having been said, this game costs £20 and isn't on steam which has made me a little nervous about buying it. The steam thing isnt the biggest issue as i could add it to my steam list after if i really wanted to, but £20!?!?!. It's not a huge amount of money, but when we got the original for free… it makes me wonder why their isnt a demo or trial version to play first.

Any opinions would be great as im really looking for a game to tie me over till BF3 comes out (+skyrim +diablo3, which will probably keep me sorted until the end of next year.

Yeah i saw that… and also saw the total biscuit WTF is vid. Made me want to play it even more to be honest…. I think the game has already sold itself to me.

Post edited 10:24 – Sep 20th 2011 by Ti1t

Nice job man. I downloaded it last night (was actually only 1.12 gig in the end) and had it finished just before i went to bed around 12:20. So i thought 'im just gonna have a quick 5 minute bash to make sure it works etc'. Needless to say i played it for a solid 45 minutes and am totally shattered at work today . It really is incredibly addictive.

Ok so i played on the single player to start with so i could go into the multiplayer feeling fairly confident about my skill. I played the first six or seven maps (finishing on the one you started your quick look on actually Ego) trying to get the best time i could. Big differences from the first one is that you can drift (tapping the break for a second normally starts it) and the car is a little more responsive than the previous game. Both changes only improve the game from the previous iterations.

The Graphics are LUSH! I did a quick benchmarking test, knowing that my PC is over a year old now and is starting to show its age a little (BF3 Alpha didn't give me much more than 50FPS on very high settings), I at 1080p resolution with almost everything maxed out i got a solid 288 FPS!?!?! VERY robust engine to pull that off. My spec is: AMD Phenom quad core 3ghz, 4 gig of 1333mhz RAM and a gigabyte GTX460 OC'd.

Time attack is incredibly addictive and surprisingly not that frustrating. The fact you can just tap backspace to restart your attempt is brilliant! Frustration will last no longer than the 3 seconds it takes to start again. I got the gold medal on the first load of maps, and one i even got an Author's medal, which i think is when you beat the author of the maps time. The game constantly rewards you by giving you feedback every time you improve. The online laddering system is brilliant as well. Every 5 minutes you can upload an official time to the server for the SP track that your practising on. You only get one attempt at this though, so if you mess up, you have to wait another 5 minutes until the next attempt. It ranks you in the following order: You area (East England for me) > Your country (England) > the World. Best I've got so far is 3rd for the east of England (forty something players).

One think i would like to see though is a friends comparison. I couldn't see the option anywhere and it just seems bazaar that you can't compare yourself to your friends directly in a custom made scoreboard. Again, this is where my confusion over the lack of steam support kicks in. If only i could have the entirety of the MLG steam community, as well as all the other communitys listed :-/

If you've played the original TrackMania Nations / United, then you know exactly what your getting before you start playing, albeit with improved graphics and handling. If you've never played a TrackMania game then i would strongly suggest playing the original TM Nations game on steam for free before trying TM2. If you like what you see then msg me on steam and I'll be more than happy to play a few games.

8/10 – Would have scored higher, but it is just an improved iteration of an already brilliant game 

(oh and yeah… i got all of that from just 45 minutes of play… but i played so much of the original that I would consider the above to be a very accurate assessment)

Ti1t is my ID. I'm also in the MLG steam group 

Once I sort my hard drive out I shall be picking this up, it has epic community night written all over it.

True but the game play is exactly the same. I would rather suggest that people give the first game a quick spin before dropping the £20 to be honest. I've had many friends that hated the idea of no collisions and not actually racing against each other on the same instance.

The handling doesn't take all that long to get used to either. The drifting is like a dream come true to me ^_^ I bought race driver: grid JUST for the drifting, so this game really does tickle all my pleasure centres.

At the moment I'm just trying to get a best time in all of England but I just can't do it >.< Is that to much to ask? I'm already the best in the east of England on a couple of races but if I'm not the best in the country what's the point? Then again, even if i managed that, then i would just want to be the best in the world straight after :-/

Ill never make the best times in anything. Its a game of continuous improvement though. The ability to keep on playing the same track and make constant improvements is so satisfying.

This makes the MP so compelling as well as you are never beat.

The lack of friends tracking etc is a real failure though as it takes some of the impetus out of group play away.

The changes to the driving systems are a real improvement for me as well…

mine is chrismohan.

Ive created a group for Midlife Gamer, so if you add your id I'll add each of you to it.

antman1983 here, top 150 in the South West moi loverrs.

Post edited 09:35 – Oct 1st 2011 by ShatnerzBassoon

Awesome work Ant!

By the way have you ever seen this before?  Saw it a while ago and its utterley brilliant (and from the frame rate running on a Cray Supercomputer!) but had no idea it inspired the second video by Mini.

Nice!

Hook me up with one of them, Antman. 

I'm there. 

Sooo much fun. Next sunday night should hopefully be a little more stable. Pretty sure the servers going down is a rare thing to happen.

Do you need any help?

That design is too epic for words. Did you use the ingame editor or manage to get a plugin for photoshop?