Tired of tackling apex in Forza Motorsport 6? Want to experience a game that pushes the laws of physics beyond their limit? Try TrackMania Turbo! I am not a fan of arcade racing games at all, but TrackMania Turbo is just a very unique kind of explosively fun racing game that truly stunned me when I played it for the first time. If you are looking for quick adrenaline-pumping racing action, TrackMania Turbo is for you.
The game itself is very tiny, only three gigabytes approximately, but it has way too many levels than anyone can possibly finish. There are four major themes to the tracks—canyon, valley, roller coaster and stadium respectively. Each theme also features ten tracks. There are five variations of each theme depending on the difficulty you are playing at. If you add it all up, you get two hundred levels. While some of the levels might feel the same, they still manage to offer a variety of challenges to keep you engaged.
I love this game, and I tried playing as much as possible, but unfortunately my skill only got me past the first fifty levels. I’ve decided to go back and perfect all of my runs in order to earn gold medals which unlock additional content. This will be difficult but I’ll keep at it. I can see myself coming back to TrackMania Turbo often even though it’s very hard at times. To get the highest rank in some I would have to call on someone with lighting fast neuron firing speeds to help me get through them.
The first aspect you notice about this game is that it runs at a silky smooth sixty frames per second. It’s true that the graphics look very cartoonish and a little simple but it’s not bad for a game that aims to have an arcade style. In fact, realism is the last thing this game wants to achieve. It’s about going completely nuts! The vehicle handling is obviously not as sophisticated as Forza Motorsport 6…there isn’t shifting required and the acceleration feels very linear. The vehicle maneuvering is very nimble, sometimes too nimble that I kept on crashing into the walls. However, none of that is an issue because after a few levels you will get the hang of it and everything feels natural.
There’s a reason why I mentioned that you need super fast reflexes in order to play this game well. The vehicle goes insanely fast that sometimes I feel my brain isn’t fast enough to register what my eyes are seeing. To make things worse—or more fun—a lot of times you aren’t in control of the vehicle due to long jumps and airborne maneuvers. There is no rewind feature and any miscalculation or bad luck means you have to do the level all over again. You could choose to go on but in a game where the goal is to get the fastest time, it’s best you start from the beginning. Luckily each level almost always takes under forty seconds to finish. I wouldn’t be able to go for any longer while maintaining such a highly focused state anyway.
The best element I like about the game is when the vehicle gets on magnetized tracks, like roller coasters. It literally makes my head turns sideways, and completely puts my spacial sense into a trance-like state. On the magnetized tracks you don’t see the vehicle but the turns and twists are just so ridiculous that even Lewis Hamilton wouldn’t say he’s comfortable. There is also off-roading, such as puddles, beaches, and dirty tracks. Handling precision is greatly reduced in this environment which I personally don’t find to be very helpful at all. It becomes very difficulty to even stay on the course. This is one area where the game could definitely improve or offer some type of tutorial.
You can also build you own tracks in the game and the creation tools are endless. You can pretty much do whatever you want as there are countless items at your disposal. The building mechanics are very simple and I was able to create a windy track in a few minutes. The more time you put in your creations, the better they’ll be. The best part is that after you lay out your track, the game automatically fills the empty areas with gorgeous structures that make your track feel like a proper level. This is one of the best parts of the game. I wish all racing games came with this feature.
If you happen to finish all two hundred levels, there are more challenges created by the community in the worldwide series as well. Needless to say, it’s a lot of content. A lot.
The game also lets you customize your vehicle in a number of ways and you gain more stickers and items as you unlock gold medals. This offers another reason to keep coming back for more. The music is also quite first-pumping and you can customize that too. Lastly, you can create your own challenges and destroy your friends. Wait, there’s more though. The title also offers a robust multiplayer mode where you can enjoy the title online with friends or locally through an amazing co-op mode. The amount of content the developers crammed into three gigabytes is truly astonishing. While I didn’t get to play a lot of multiplayer matches, the few I did engage in felt great. I didn’t encounter any serious issues at all.
Summary
Although I haven’t encountered any major drawbacks to the game, there are some technical issues that affect the experience of the title such as stuttering after finishing a lap. Loading times are also a bit too excessive for each track which is quite small.
All in all, TrackMania Turbo is a fantastic game in its genre. It offers thrills, fast action, and a great casual racing experience that very few other arcade racing games do as well as this one. Due to small levels, playing doesn’t exhaust you too much. I’d recommend this title to anyone who likes racing games, but wants to break all the rules and just go crazy!
Xian was a regular ICXM contributor between 2015–2017, publishing 162 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.