TrackMania United Forever

Trackmania United Forever is a racing game that is too pure, too beautiful for this world. But before I gush on about how much I love it, there's a serious question that needs to be answered, first. What is Trackmania United Forever? Typically, racing game series have a yearly order (or a numeracle one) that's fairly simple to follow. Trackmania, on the other hand, is one big mess, so I'll give you a quick summary. The original series is centered around three focal games: The original Trackmania, Trackmania Sunrise, and Trackmania United. Each one has various expansions, with United Forever being the expansion of the final pre-Ubisoft Trackmania game. In short: This is the version that's on Steam, and it's the game with the most amount of content in the series.

As far as track design and mechanics go, the differences between the three main Trackmania games are actually very minor. The original Trackmania has three modes (known in United as Snow, Desert, and Rally). Trackmania Sunrise adds in Island, Coast, and Bay. Finally, United adds the popular Stadium mode to the mix. That's seven whole racing styles for one game! And not only that, but thanks to the beauty of track import, the player can experience every track from the previous games in United's engine. This is a great feature, especially since the older Trackmania games are difficult to play due to their DRM issues. This track importing quickly starts to morph Trackmania into 'racing game Stepmania' with how much content you can stuff into it, even if you only grab the official tracks.

The concept behind Trackmania is a simple one. Get to the finish line as fast as possible. Yet, like any other time-based challenge games (i.e. Super Monkey Ball), getting the gold medal takes some practice. At first, you'll need to swerve around corners carefully to get a feel for each mode's handling. Later levels will challenge the player with more obstacles and tricky jumps, requiring further precision the more progression they make.

Stadium is the most straightforward out of all of the modes, hence the popularity. The handling is the most familiar to arcadey racing games, and the paved tracks are relatively simple to follow. By contrast, every other mode has its own strange quirks that will attract certain players. Rally has far more touchy steering than Stadium, with tracks that encourage cuts and offroad driving. They are littered with bumps and debris, making momentum more difficult to maintain. In the Snow mode, the steering capabilities are cranked to the maximum, with momentum being the primary focus. These levels require pinpoint precision from the player. Some techniques must be learned in order to surpass winding pipes that force the player to spin upside-down while driving.

Desert is another strange mode that has been with the game since the beginning. The Desert car tends to lean on one side while turning, making precise cornering double as a balancing act. Coast is a strange mode that seems to parody simulation physics, as the car slowly slides across the track while turning. Any sort of simple track becomes a challenge to navigate, making this arguably the most difficult mode to learn. The Island mode, on the other hand, cranks the speed up to the maximum. Every turn becomes a battle against gravity as you try to prevent the car from sliding across the track. Then, there's the Bay mode, which has some of the most difficult track designs out of every mode. These tracks are filled with obstacles and other annoyances that will send your truck flying. Getting gold for any of these modes will take some patience.

I couldn't talk about United Forever without mentioning the online aspects, of course. I tend to skip over the online portions of offline games unless they make up a significant amount of the game's experience. Online games don't last forever, you know! That being said, United Forever has done a fairly good job at staying true to its name, seeing as online lobbies are still up and running nearly 14 years after this version's release. The whole idea behind the stadium mode's online integration was to give the player the impression that they're truly competing against every other country in a huge stadium event. Every country has its own unique car livery, meaning you'll be able to tell whether the car in front of you is from Poland, Australia, France, Canada, and so on. Before, you were simply navigating through little tracks, but now, you're participating in a grand, worldwide sport. A sport of the... electronic variety. Jokes aside, this game's interpretation of an 'e-sport' is more spot on than any other video game I've ever seen. Other games might stick a flag next to the user's name, but Trackmania goes the extra mile. Even Ubisoft has tried to lean the series further into the established modern 'e-sports' concept with its 2020 installment. Though, playing into the trend is missing the point if you ask me. United Forever feels like its own world by comparison.

Additionally, this game features leaderboards for every track, and 'ladder points' for every mode to give the player some kind of impression of where they're standing compared to everyone else. It's not especially accurate, as it indicates more of a completionist or playtime accumulate rather than a skill gauge. Yet, the feature is nice all the same. Number go up! The player has the option to download the replays of the leaderboard participates, should they feel the need to learn the cuts and techniques of the other players ahead of them.

Considering the simple goal of getting from the starting line to the finish line, the longetivity of Trackmania United Forever is astonishing. The depth spans into multiple different game modes, giving the player an endless amount of skill potential to explore. As far as movement-based gameplay goes, United Forever has mastered the concept. Even outside of the racing game genre, the appeal of Trackmania is easy to understand. The mechanics are easy to understand, and the desire to improve is easy to get hooked into. It's worth the shot!

Basically a patch/update for the original games
brings back stunts and other stuff wich is cool
tho it seems to completely change the order(/tracks ?)
almost feel like a new game