Enjoying time trials? Me? It came as a bit of a personal shocker when I found it happening, but there it was, brought on by TrackMania DS.
I promised in my DiRT 2 review that I'd talk a little more about the other Firebrand-developed DS racer that I owned. TrackMania came my way via two factors: a handful of friends who really liked the original PC game, and the discovery that I could pick up TrackMania DS for a measly $10 at a local GameStop. From that point, finding out it was the same studio who was behind the rather good DiRT 2 DS version was all it took for me to pick it up and finally give it a serious go.
TrackMania DS's core game has very little in the way of frills; it's all about making your way through courses in the least amount of time possible. To that end, it's polished finely, with Y and X doing duty as checkpoint and full restart buttons to make it easy to recover from your flubs or total wipe-outs and get right back into the action. Beyond that you have a d-pad to steer, B and A doing brake and accelerate, and when in the air, you can try to correct your car's pitch with d-pad up and down.
Yes, I said "in the air"; one of TrackMania's trademarks is that tracks are usually not just pedestrian circuit affairs (though there are plenty of curves to negotiate), but include all sorts of delightful gimmicks like turbo strips, jumps, walls to drive on the side of, and loops. These stunts aren't just for show, either; recovery is particularly important if you want to keep from losing speed and falling behind.
Firebrand's expertise, which I'm becoming increasingly clued-in to, makes the intense physics of TrackMania work remarkably well on DS. The feel is certainly a little different—you can tell you're not on quite as advanced a system as your PC—but it really works nonetheless. There's a reasonably good track editor included, too, with (as I read) space for 60 of your own creations.
It all adds up to a tremendously entertaining "just one more try" experience, racing against the built-in medal times on each track, getting familiar with every twist and turn, steering and pitching your car precisely to try to squeeze every hundredth of a second you can out of your time on the track, staying ahead of the ghosts. Unlike the original PC TrackMania, there's nothing in the way of online support here—though it's been said the upcoming sequel will offer it—but it's hard to miss it when it's so easy to turn my DS on and just run a few races against the challenging benchmarks already set for me.
I think I've found yet another series and developer to become a fan of. I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming DS and Wii installments—both with Firebrand at the helm once again. In the meantime, I consider my measly $10 more than well-spent—it was a steal.
I promised in my DiRT 2 review that I'd talk a little more about the other Firebrand-developed DS racer that I owned. TrackMania came my way via two factors: a handful of friends who really liked the original PC game, and the discovery that I could pick up TrackMania DS for a measly $10 at a local GameStop. From that point, finding out it was the same studio who was behind the rather good DiRT 2 DS version was all it took for me to pick it up and finally give it a serious go.
TrackMania DS's core game has very little in the way of frills; it's all about making your way through courses in the least amount of time possible. To that end, it's polished finely, with Y and X doing duty as checkpoint and full restart buttons to make it easy to recover from your flubs or total wipe-outs and get right back into the action. Beyond that you have a d-pad to steer, B and A doing brake and accelerate, and when in the air, you can try to correct your car's pitch with d-pad up and down.
Firebrand's expertise, which I'm becoming increasingly clued-in to, makes the intense physics of TrackMania work remarkably well on DS. The feel is certainly a little different—you can tell you're not on quite as advanced a system as your PC—but it really works nonetheless. There's a reasonably good track editor included, too, with (as I read) space for 60 of your own creations.
I think I've found yet another series and developer to become a fan of. I'm very much looking forward to the upcoming DS and Wii installments—both with Firebrand at the helm once again. In the meantime, I consider my measly $10 more than well-spent—it was a steal.