An abhorently under appreciated game, I nominate it for Racing Game of the Year, and Most Innovative Game of the Year.
User Rating: 9.4 | TrackMania Sunrise PC
No Game has ever allowed so much freedom, while boasting good graphics [the water effects are brilliant], and THE highest replay value of any game I have ever played. Sunrise is namely a racing game, but the main focus on the game is creating tracks. At least, for me it is. You race on the games championships and various cups to earn coppers, which are then used as currency to create tracks. Track creating is definetly where this game shines, and it shines bright. The editor is fairly straight forward, but a tad tricky upon first use, but amazingly powerful. However, as time wears on, and you familiarize yourself, you can actually get quite efficient. As a tip, keyboard shortcuts are the order of the day, as using the mouse to continuously click the rotate piece button, or zoom in. The game uses a seemingly simple block system, where all of the pieces us up a block, or two, or three. By placing the blocks at various heights and position, they will actually conform to each other to create smooth tracks, with the aid of a "clip" system. Each block type uses its own unique clip. Example: all road pieces in the "Island" environment use large black clips, and the big concrete quarter pipes and vertical ramp pieces that can be used to make killer loops and stunts, have a blue clip. Adapters are used connect multiple types of track pieces across different terrains. On the actual "driving" front, the three environments all have a unique vehicle. The Island and Bay cars are sporty and fast, highly manoeuvrable, and able to do some pretty crazy things. However, the Coast car stands out. It is slower, and turns comparatively bad. However, it is intended to be a more realistic and challenging experience. After a while, it actually gets fun to drive, and it has some really cool track pieces that seem totally whacked at first, but upon further inspection, it becomes apparent that this wonderfully complex system is the result of an amazing amount of hard work and coordination on the developers part. That hard work and dedication is seen many more places within the game aside the track editor. So much of this game’s mechanics seem as though it would have been a developers nightmare to tweak and perfect. A few prime examples are the skin painter, and Media Tracker. Media Tracker: The Media tracker is a tool integrated into the track editor that allows in game effects like custom camera angles for certain jumps, or text to appear on the screen that might give hints to the track, or comments to the driver, or even sound effects! Skin Painter: The skin painter is used to apply decals and paint to any car at whim. It is highly versatile and really sweet. Also, the skin painter can paint custom or imported meshes for any shape or design of car you want. As far as the single player chalenges go, they are quite easy at first, but get hard, fast. Although fun, they can be unforgivingly hard, and I have yet to complete all the races, and I have owned the game for three months as of the review. Multi-player wise, eight guys can race online and over a local network. However, being burdened with dial-up, I haven’t been privileged with trying it. Dial-up however, does not stop online track sharing. The official track site makes it easy and very fast to download tons of cool tracks. The amazing size and complexity of the tracks is quite contrasted to their file size, which averages between 8-12kb. Yes that says 8(eight)-12(twelve)Kilobytes. Kilobytes, not megabytes folks. That means that with a ~3.5kbps transfer rate that I have, its done in 2-3 seconds. My guess is that the block system is the secret to the small files. I must, however, address one issue. Compatibility. The minimum system requirements are a joke. Pentium 3(or the like) 500Mhz, 128mb Ram, 16Mb video card are the "minimum". Not a chance. Ony my Amd Athlon Xp 2.14Ghz with 512 Mb Ram, and a 256Mb Geforce 5700Le video card, it runs at medium graphics with the occasional frame drop. My machine cant even touch the High graphic setting, or the Very high setting. As far as this game goes, I recomend at least twice the minimum requirement. All in all, TM Sunrise is an amazing piece of work. Nadeo gets a thumbs up for their meticulous work. Wether you are into racing or not, as long as you like a challenge, this game is for you. I personally have spent innumerable hours designing tracks. Good graphics, okay sound, and a super high replay value combined with infinite creativity make this game worthy of any gamer. Only one issue: Where’s the Xbox version? Xbox live and split screen multiplayer would be rad. :-) 9.5/10
