Trackmania Sunrise Preview

The hairpin leads to a short sprint to a ramp. The ramp is the launching point for a long jump over water. Land right and you have a chance to cross the finish line in record time; miss and you lose valuable time, and that can mean the difference between a gold medal or no medal at all.

Trackmania Sunrise is a pending PC release from Nadio and Enlight, slated for release in June. The game is a racing vehicle that looks great and has some rather amazing challenges and track puzzles.

GameZone.com was able to get its hands, with permission of course, on a preview version of the disk and while not all elements were in place, there was more than enough there to make for a thoroughly enjoyable and addictive foray into this world.

There are two ways of playing the game – either in solo, or multiplayer. The solo mode has three sub-menus – Official Campaigns, Community Campaigns (presumably on tracks designed by players and downloaded) and Single Challenges. Neither of the latter two was active.

The Official Campaigns are broken down into four forms of play – race, platform, puzzle and survival (the latter was not available, and without a manual, the puzzle was a little confusing). Race is a series of three races in each of three locations. You begin with a racing vehicle on a tight track, with 90-degree turns and some interesting jumps. The second race in the series has drivers going up a vertical, giant half-tube, then sliding over to another pipe to get down onto the continuation of the track. You fly around a highly bank tracked, with a severe drop off on one side, and then gather speed to fly the ramp over the high wall of the banked track and land near the finish line.

The car is fast and the racing combines peddle to the metal dashes, tight lines through twisting tracks. From the Race campaign (each is timed and you can earn medals – bronze, silver and gold) and tokens for fast finishes. Your time also finds its way into the online ladders. The second series of races involve SUVs, but the action is more platforms and a bigger challenge. The third series of races involves a vehicle that looks like a big sports car, but handles like a tank.

In the Platform series, drivers will have to decipher a path through aerial jumps, which also include some aerial transfers to continue on an adjacent track.

There are track power-ups that supply a speed boost.

Multiplayer offers local, local network and Internet play. Internet offers location-specific gaming and challenges.

The controls are fine with the keyboard, but really start to shine with a gamepad connected to the PC. The game has a few graphical flaws in switching camera angles, but that is to expected at this stage in the game and will likely be cleaned up by the time the game releases. But for the most part, the camera angles work well, the tracks are exciting and the environments are lush and well rendered. And the vehicles look very good, and the driving physics are close to reality, but with some lapses to make for more exciting and wide-open racing.

The game does come with a number of songs that rotate through and underscore various races. This aspect is fine, and does not detract from the main drive of the game – which is the racing.

Trackmania Sunrise is an addictive and challenging race that has a wonderful base selection of tracks and is propping itself up for great online support. This is definitely a title to keep an eye on.