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TrackMania DSBy Marlon Esmeralda - 04-24-09 Print  EmailTrackMania has already established itself as a hit racing franchise thanks to its growing popularity on the PC. Now the TrackMania name has reached the Nintendo DS in TrackMania DS. Thanks to its TrackMania name, the game will certainly get noticed among the other already released racing titles, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will a great racing game. It does represent the name fairly well, but the game's lack of online compatibility holds back a lot of its potential. TrackMania DS consists of three single-player racing modes; race, platform, and puzzle. Race is where most of the hardcore racing will take place. This mode will first have you choosing your environment. Your choices are stadium, desert, and rally. Each environment comes with their own set of tracks and a specific car that will be used. For example, stadium will have F1 cars that are fast but have poor steering, while Desert will have cars with good steering. Once you have selected your track, the race will begin. In Race mode you are basically gunning for the best time on the track. Each will have a bronze, silver, and gold time listed. You will then be given the choice to race the ghosts for each of these times, being it individually, all at the same time, or none at all. The ghosts won't affect you on the track as you will just run right through them, so you're pretty much racing alone. Based on what time you get, you will be awarded a medal. The tracks are what you would expect from the TrackMania series. Lots of wacky track designs full of jumps, loops, twists, and other things the series is known for. The tracks are lots of fun to play through, but some are pretty difficult too. Getting the top time is certainly not an easy task. So you may want to restart the race every now and then. Thanks to a simple button press, its pretty simple to do. With the push of a button you can reset yourself to the last checkpoint, or restart the whole race altogether. It works very well with no lag time at all during the process, as the effect is instantaneous. Platform mode works in a similar way to Race mode. This time around you won't be aiming for the best time, but just making it to the finish line. Platform mode is full of tracks that aim to pull you off course by way of holes, edges, and jumps. Your goal is to make it to the finish line in the fewest amounts of retries possible. It's definitely a new way to play a racing game. Speaking of new ways to play racing games, there's also Puzzle mode. This mode utilizes the game's track editor mode. You are given an incomplete track, which will have a start and finish point. Your mission is to use the limited track pieces given to you in order to finish the track. Using the game's editor mode you will place each track piece into place, making an actual race track. Once finished, you will need to race your car from start to finish. It's a very interesting twist on the whole racing design. By achieving high marks in these modes you will be awarded Copper, the game's currency. Each medal earned will net you a specific amount of Copper. This Copper will be used for the game's Shop, where you will buy new tracks, car skins, and additional track pieces for the editor mode. There are quite a number of these items to purchase so a lot of replayability is in store. Also adding to that is the game's track editor, which will allow you make new tracks. The editor interface is easy to use and is the only part where you will need the stylus. You can also trade your designs to another DS, but only locally. There is a multiplayer mode included as well, in order to help lengthen the overall experience. The most disappointing part of the game though is its multiplayer. What you get is hotseat, multi-card, and single-card multiplayer. What you don't get is online multiplayer, which makes no sense since TrackMania is best known for its online multiplayer gameplay on the PC. I'm not sure why this wasn't implemented in the game, but it certainly takes away a lot from what this game could have been. TrackMania DS certainly holds up well for a DS title. The game moves pretty fast without much slow down so its pretty smooth. The graphics look pretty good overall for a racing title. The audio is pretty standard though. Typical racing sounds and a decent soundtrack. Racing fans will certainly enjoy what TrackMania DS has to offer, but its kind of hard to really recommend this particular racing game. Its certainly has its own style of gameplay and the Puzzle mode is a very creative idea. However, the game's lack of online multiplayer certainly hurts it a lot. There was just so much that could have been done with it, like online leaderboards, matches, and trading track designs. With the top DS racing games(Mario Kart DS) already having online support, its hard to consider TrackMania over them. Still, as a single-player racing experience, TrackMania DS is quite fun. Ratings |
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