Trackmania Nations Forever

Title
Developer
Publisher
Genre
ESRB Rating
Demo Release Date
Full Release Date
Platforms
Official Website
Demo Download Size
Review Date

Trackmania Nations Forever
Nadeo
Focus Home Interactive
Racing
Everyone
16th April 2008
16th April 2008
PC
http://www.trackmania.com
504MB
25th May 2008

What did I think before playing?
I only heard about this game because it popped up in the Steam game news as I started up my client. It was quoted as a full game for free. A quick scan of the product page made it look like a pretty solid looking racer, so why not? The price is right!

What is included?
A whole hell of a lot! Single player maps across multiple cups, online multiplayer racing in various modes, statistics & worldwide rankings and probably much more that I didn't get to. After playing I realized there are level, car and video editors in the game too.

What did I think afterwards?
I created an account, which at first I thought was odd as I assumed this game was based off SteamWorks for the online portion, but that obviously is not the case. I started with single player and played through about half of the tracks in the first cup. Each is basically a single-lap time trial around a different track and, this being the first group, each introduced a new element such as jumps or other obstacles. I found it addictive enough to go for gold medals on each of them due to the feedback you get on your improving world ranking against other real players each time you earn a medal. While the racing wasn't quite what I had expected, (it is more F-Zero X or Wipeout than the F1 cars would suggest,) it was quite fun.
Then I took the plunge and jumped online. This was a large leap in terms of track layout with loop-de-loops, racing along walls, speed pads and other craziness showing up. A pop up explained the game mode being played on the server I had joined, (through a "recommended servers" feature in the server browser which you can also narrow down by country and region; hence the titular "Nations",) which was essentially a hot-lap mode with everyone racing together for a few minutes trying to post the best time, but with collision turned off. I thought this was quite a clever way for a free game to save time and effort on the networking code by making lag etc. irrelevant since it didn't really matter if you didn't see an exact replication of what the other players on the track were doing. Going from the simple tracks to the ones I was now playing took a few minutes to adjust, so I did poorly for the first race. The other players were chatting away in the text window at the bottom of the screen and you could see the progress of the top 8 players' times on the right. I actually improved a lot quite quickly and started posting half decent times but still ending up in the bottom half of the 32-player, (I think,) table. I left this server and tried to find out if there were other game modes. Indeed there are a few, but most servers seem to be running the default time trial mode. I joined one that was running a points based game where you all raced around a track and got points for finishing higher up the table, (e.g. 10 for a win, 9 for second, etc.) You repeat the single lap race until one player reaches 30 points to become the winner, before starting again on a new track. By this point I was doing well and finishing in the top 5 occasionally, so started joining in with the banter in the text box. We were commenting on each of the tracks as some seemed cruelly deigned with regards to checkpoint layout. I got the impression these were fan made tracks, (with custom intro movies included,) but I didn't know for sure. If true, that provides potentially unlimited, fresh online game play. I remember at one point while racing there was a vote to kick one guy who the game thought was cheating based on his invalid lap times, (just hit F2 to vote for kicking and the majority wins after 30 seconds,) so there has been some attention to detail here.
I was done playing so shut the game down and was unexpectedly prompted by Steam with a pop-up stating that I could upgrade to Trackmania United Forever. The description of that game seems to paint the picture that the single player portion of the game is significantly beefed up with more modes and 200 more tracks. The online game has the addition of a virtual currency and an ability to share your custom cars and tracks with other players. The graphics are apparently improved as well. $40 USD to purchase.

Would I buy the full game?
No. At least, certainly not for a while. There is so much in this free version that I don't see a reason to upgrade unless I got really into the single player. I also wasn't that impressed with the graphical side of things and presentation within Nations which I let slide by thinking of this game almost as a mod. But if I am paying $40 for the game, I expect a professional level of polish. (To be fair, the screenshots look great so it could be that my ATI mobile graphics card is showing its inadequacy after only a couple of years. However, I did have issues trying to play with a widescreen resolution which did not layout the menus properly.)

Demo Pros
A full, free game with lots to do. Impressively builds a Trackmania brand that lots of players will now be aware of and feel favorably towards.

Demo Cons
They give away the farm with this one, so there is little incentive to pay $40 for an "ultimate edition." I can see how you could be turned though, for example if you wanted to share content with others after spending hours tinkering with the editors. But, being free, this game is disposable so most players will not get to that point of purchase and even if they were tempted after a while, there will probably be another game out that demands their attention and money by then.

Demo Rating 8 / 10

Thoughts after playing the full game?
If I play the full game I will put comments here about whether I feel the demo was representative of the final product and if I am happy with the purchase.

Sales Figures
If I can find sales information about a game after it has been released I'll add that here. It may be useful to track demos to sales performance.