TrackManiac !!

Ahh ! Writing after many days...this post is guaranteed to be scratchy :P

After playing TrackMania Nations , I just had to try this newest version of TrackMania, The TrackMania Forever !!
For those who don't know what TrackMania is, here's the wiki topic link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trackmania

The official website is : http://www.trackmania.com
The setup can be downloaded from the their site. This game is free to download and free to play :D

TrackMania Forever was released on 17-18 April, 2008 ( when the PL had just started :D ) and it has around 1 million ( 980k , to be precise) registered online players.The Indian community is not-so-strong with just around 2,500 odd players....i'm currently ranked 254th among the 2.5k players :D
TMForever lets you choose between online and offline play...i just love games which have both online and offline modes :).
TrackMania in the offline (Solo) mode offers campaigns.The campaigns have been changed significantly. Their difficulty is now reflected by colors (White - easiest, Green, Blue, Red, Black - hardest), and progression to harder tracks is limited by requiring you to finish the previous track(s) with some medal first: You need bronze medal to proceed to next track in Green difficulty, silver for Blue, and gold medal in Red. The black tracks only unlock after you gain gold on ALL the previous tracks.Nice practice before you jump onto the online community :-)

There are basically 2 types of tracks...Dirt tracks and Stadium tracks.There are more stadium tracks than dirt ones, but both the types are equally engaging.

A stadium track :

Dirt track :

Online Action :

Online mode lets you choose different servers from around the world. What I liked most is that it also provides a list of recommended servers, where the average player ranking is close to yours...
Winning races or finishing in the top 5 ,gives LP points, which is the basis for the rankings.
Online mode is madly addictive ( though MMORPGs are more addictive :P).
The only downside to the Online play is that, in India, where bandwidth is metered, online play can cost quite a lot of "MBs" ( thats the reason why i love MMORPGs :P).


The more thing that I haven't touched yet is the track editor ....which as the name suggests lets you edit tracks or create new ones !

If you haven't played Trackmania yet, then this the game to start with.If you have been playing since the United version, this version really doesn't add much ( I read this on some other review :P).

For : Good graphics, Addictive gameplay, Offline and Online modes, Track editor ,Its FREE !!
Against : May cost you lots of "MBs" during online play.
Rating : 9.5/10
(- 0.5 less coz it really uses up too much "MBs" :-( )