Trackmania2 Stadium is a pretty easy game to explain. You drive a Formula 1 racing car on tracks to earn medals. The less time it takes you to complete the tracks, the higher the medal you get. It's not really a competitive racing game like Grid or Burnout where you are racing against other cars, well at least in the single player portion of the game. You can set a ghost of your best time to race to show up in the race to see how well your run is going, but even in the multiplayer there is ZERO collision and I never understood whether I was racing against other people LIVE or I was racing against their best times.
As far as the single player tracks, this game reminds me a lot of Trials HD on Xbox Live Arcade, but instead of a motorcycle, you are driving a F1 car. Don't get me wrong, as you move up in difficulty, the tracks become longer and longer, with huge jumps, loop de loops, speed boosts, skipping off water ponds, so these tracks are no like the short spurts of Trials. I just meant your objective and manner of challenge is the same as that game. You're trying to get to the finish line in the least amount of time possible.
There are no choices in this game as to type of car. There are no upgrades. The only thing you can modify is the skin of the car. The default is just a paint job that is basically the flag of the country you are from. For example, I am registered as American, so my car looks like the American flag. You can download user created skins online using planets (currency you win in-game), but I was never able to access the skin I downloaded from Steam.
The car handles well, even if at times it seems glued to the track. I don't think I have ever spun out while playing Stadium. You can get turned sideways if you are going really fast around a sharp bend, but there is very little if any drifting in this game. So if that's your thing, you probably won't like this game.
The tracks are fun to run and visually beautiful. Just picture tracks from the movie version of Speed Racer and you might get a feel for the game. And they are not all paved. Some tracks feature dirt and even grass which does allow for some looser driving. The problem I ran into on the fourth set of tracks is that as the tracks get more difficult, getting a gold medal is the only way to progress and unlock more tracks. To me, this is kinda dumb. I have NEVER been a gold medal finisher on racing games. I'm more the silver medal type, and in worst case, bronze. The fourth set tracks were so difficult that I was having problems even FINISHING the race, much less getting a gold medal! So I just gave up on the game, which is a real shame, because what I have played is really fun.
I can see setting a bronze as a requirement to progress, but to me, you can't UP the medal placing even as you UP the difficulty. If anything it should be the OPPOSITE. The hardest tracks should require LOWER medal placement. I played two tracks on the 4th set and realized, never in my life will I EVER score a gold medal on these tracks. EVER. So I am leaving this game behind with about 20 tracks that I will never be able to even SEE, much less play.
The multiplayer aspects of this game remain much of a mystery to me. When you look at the servers, there is very little actual racing going on. Almost all of the servers, if not all, are devoted to time attacks. The edges of the screen are filled with all sorts of data and numbers, all of which seem to mean something, but exactly what, I'm not quite sure what. Typically, you see tons of cars at the start line, but there are no collisions, so it almost seems as if you're in a school of ghostly fish. You can start over again pretty easily, but I guess this time attack thing isn't happening in real time, so the other cars don't start over with you. There is straight up racing and also team races but for the times I tried online there were no servers featuring these categories.
I for one think this game would be much improved with multiplayer real time racing and collision, but I guess then you'd have to lower the participants for each race. That wouldn't be bad in my opinion. It just feels like I was racing against ghosts at best, at worst it reminded me of Dirt's boring rally racing.
The game also allows you to create your own tracks and car skins and upload them to the internet, and vice versa, lets YOU download other player's tracks and cars. I didn't have much luck downloading a skin for my car, much less a track. It would help if the game had some tutorials about all the data onscreen or how to access user content.
The single player aspect of this game was really fun and visually impressive UNTIL you reached the tracks where you have to earn gold medals to unlock the next series of raceways. This stopped my playing cold. I will probably never go back to the game again. I estimate I accessed about 80% of the single player before I got to the all gold medal barbed wire line.
Trackmania2 Stadium is available for $9.99 from Steam or from . You can also play an early version of the game called Trackmania Nations Forever as a FREE download from Steam. You can also buy the game at http://www.maniaplanet.com/trackmania/stadium
My Grade: B+
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