It is something of a necessity too as by the time you start drifting your way around the Canyon Grand Drift circuits, or flying up and down the hills in the Down & Dirty Valley, you’ll need to be fully versed in exactly how to master the simple controls and your not so simple car. The International Stadium kicks things off with the first few tracks on the easiest stages and this is a great place to hone your skills.
Split across four unique environments, with a specific car in place for each stage, the tracks are beautifully colourful beasts that will keep pulling you back for more, if not in an attempt to best your own slack times, but for full bragging rights with friends around the world. Do you have what it takes to grab that bronze medal? Can you attempt the same track further times in order to bag the silver? Are you some kind of crazed speed freak who loves repetition and bettering themselves? It is only then when you’ll find the gold medals making their way to your bank and TrackMania Turbo excelling. With a ton of luminescent signs helping you along the way, giving a slight heads up to what is to come, what you need to avoid, and the best route for progress, TrackMania Turbo basically boils down to you and the clock in a test of nerves.
But until you do, it’ll be full throttle at all times, with a dab of the brakes only being needed should you need to slightly correct things, both when on the track and in the air. Your cars are twitchy rocket powered beasts that only ever let up if you hit a well placed engine cut off section of the track. You’ll never know what is coming up next and so your reactions will need to be on point throughout. From your initial drop into the action – quite literally – you’ll find yourself and your skills being pushed to the limit as you hit banked curves, full on loops, jumps and tracks that have quite obviously been designed by some kind of rollercoasting sadist. Taking control of one of four vehicles, TMT throws you round more than 200 tracks in what can only be described as ‘Hot Wheels on steroids’. It’s fast, it’s frantic and in its rawest form, is absolutely nuts. Instead TrackMania Turbo focuses massively on time trialing to such a point that you’ll quickly forget that you are given little chance to really show how robust your racing is.