![]() Textures have a tendency to pop in with very little subtlety however when this does occur the player will be concentrating more on the road rather than staring into the distance. While environments and textures are clear and distinguishable enough to allow no hindrance to the gameplay, it is clearly obvious that there are prettier looking titles available on the market. Graphically for a PC game, TrackMania 2: Canyon is only adequate at best. Here you will get a chance to experience a mixture of official and custom made content depending on the server, occasionally some lag is present but since players can’t hit each other this provides very little annoyance to the experience overall. Online play is rather similar to the single player variant but is enjoyable none the less, all players have a set time limit in which to set their best possible record and servers can easily handle up to numbers of fifty or more players at a time. Also with each new difficulty setting the player is pulled into a new location within the canyon environment, later levels always add something new keeping players on their toes at all times. Even the most hardened of TrackMania veteran will have to learn an entirely new vehicle which resembles a mixture of previous cars from the series, greater emphasis has gone into brake drifting and jumps are not always solved by naturally going flat out on the accelerator anymore. Even when compared to previous titles in the series the initial bar of entry is higher than usual with early levels being fairly unforgiving at times. Sometimes the solution to certain obstacles is not always obvious as the game tends to break away from the majority of standard racing game conventions when it comes to controls and physics. TrackMania 2: Canyon at times can be a hard game and is not for the faint hearted. Early levels start as somewhat mundane so that players have the chance to get familiar with the car’s handling but before long the game acquaints players with the insane roller coaster inspired tracks which have become a staple theme of the series. Though despite this emphasis of repetition you’ll find very little boredom here, the majority of the tracks are short and sweet “A to B” affairs which can be mostly completed in under a minute. Ha! Look at that guy! Who drives on the ground anymore!? Every track is a learning curve, study and repetition are a necessity in order to shave a few extra seconds off your best time and before long the process of quickly restarting over and over becomes second nature. TrackMania 2: Canyon allows a player to instantly restart at any time with the press of a button, this is a must have feature as the slightest mistake can potentially mess up your time or even send you careening off the course entirely. All other racers are ghosts of previous records which can be used by the player as a visual guideline that offers insight on how to deal with the games more tricky obstacles. Keeping with tradition, the main gameplay of TrackMania 2: Canyon is not racing against others, competition stems from besting one another in solo time trials. Despite the emphasis on going back to basics what TrackMania 2: Canyon does offer is an incredible scope of depth with a surprisingly large amount of variety which easily matches if not succeeds its predecessors. This decision does come as a surprise considering that previous titles in the series offered a range of seven different environments each with their own unique vehicles. However the entire game has been stripped back down to one location setting and only one type of car. At its very core TrackMania has always been a pure arcade racing experience with the true star not being the cars but as the title suggests all of the games character and magic is imbued into the tracks themselves.Īfter releasing several instalments since its debut in 2003 Nadeo have gone for a true sequel to the franchise (as this is currently the 7th). TrackMania has always been a premier franchise for the system, but Gran Turismo this is not, the cars are not licensed and there’s no fine tuning for changes in performance. And the finest of these gems is none other than the TrackMania series. While the PC is not the obvious “go to” platform to facilitate the needs of racing fans, every now and then a true gem will appear that gives desktop junkies another reason to remain proud. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |