Trackmania Turbo Beta Impressions

Martin McCurdie Mon Feb 22, 2016 11:14 am

I got into the Trackmania Turbo beta and have been having fun trying the game out the last few days. It is a very good fun arcade racer with massive jumps, loops, obstacles on the track to avoid and it's very, very fast! You get 40 tracks to try in the beta so it's a very generous slice of the full game in single player where you try and beat certain times to win a bronze, silver or gold medal. It is highly addictive replaying tracks to try and nail it and get a gold, then you can compete with your friends times and those of other peoples on the world leaderboards.

There is multiplayer as well but although you race at the same time you cant hit each other as all the other cars are ghosts. Given how narrow some sections of track are to challenge you to squeeze through without hitting the sides the game wouldn't really work if you were all bumping into each other so it works very well and is great fun against others. The online lobby system works a lot like Gran Turismo 6 in that the host creates a lobby which anyone can join as well as partying up with your friends, random people can join in too or you can make it private with just your friends. This worked so so well in GT6 when I played that I had lots of friends I met through a lobby I found and ended up being friends with them for years. I wish all racing games would use a similar system rather than just joining a random lobby full of strangers each time.

I tried the track editor and it was very simple and easy to use to create some really impressive looking tracks! You just select pieces of track from the start line to finish one at a time that is just like building a virtual Scalextric set then once you've built the basic layout environmental detail and scenery is randomly generated around it. You then have to beat the track to validate it so you can upload it for others to try much like Super Mario Maker makes you complete your own levels before you can upload it.

The full game is out 25th March on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC. The console versions are £24.99 most places Ive seen. There is 200 preset tracks in the full game and being able to download others or create your own should have a lot of replay value for a modest price and graphically it is very good. I think I will be picking this up as Ive been very impressed by the beta!

Big Angry Dad82 (gamertag) FuriousGeorge05(PSN ID) BigAngryDad (NNID)

dazzamann Mon Feb 22, 2016 11:23 am

I downloaded the Beta over the weekend, will try and give it ago this week. Thanks for the update.

Martin McCurdie Mon Feb 22, 2016 11:29 am

I hope it sells very well as this is the first time its been on home consoles usually its PC only although there was one on the DS. Certainly looks worth the price they are asking and its a lot of fun for the relatively low price and packed with content.