Trackmania is a series I’ve stayed well away from for obvious reasons, but it appears that longtime fans of the series won’t be happy with Trackmania Turbo. 
Not only will the game retail for $50 despite other games in the series selling for far less and even free (in the case of Trackmania Nations), but will also remove modding support and dedicated server support, two aspects of the previous games that have helped the title explode in popularity among PC gamers.
The Steam forums are pretty pissed, judging by some of the topic titles:
Again, I don’t recall ever playing Trackmania, but it’s clear as day judging by initial reception to the title’s announcement that UbiSoft dun goof’d pretty hard here.
Trackmania nations was a very very great game. The online side was always entertaining and all the time active. Everyone was trying 1000x just to shave a couple tenths and be on lead. The car and track tricks were cool. Never played the non-free games.. but what Ubisoft is doing here is to ruin it for everyone. Ubisoft must be stopped, and not just on trackmania… xd
LikeLike
Nadeo shot themselves in the foot with how great Nations was. Not only was it an awesome and really competitive game, but it was also completely free. Nothing they do short of doing that again can live up to it.
TrackMania 2 was supposed to be a legit successor to Sunrise, but it was released unfinished and because it wasn’t free, never caught on the same way that Nations did. I haven’t been following TM much since then but it’s my understanding they eventually added back in Stadium to TM2.
Trackmania Sunrise shipped years ago at full price. It was a great game and it created many Trackmania fans (me included). It shipped with three fully featured environments and a bunch of SP challenges. I think Nadeo is trying to return to the Sunrise model and ship a full price game. I just checked and apparently Turbo has 4 environments. The new Island with the trucks, Stadium (this was Nations), Canyon (This was TM2), and Valley (A rally-like environment if I remember right). This is very similar to Sunrise, which is what kicked off the franchise’s popularity.
Honestly that sounds pretty good to me, and will definitely be keeping an eye on it, but there is one BIG deal breaker that is hard to ignore. UPlay.
UPlay sucks. It’s obtuse, a hassle to work around, and means you go through two layers of DRM just to play your game. It has no reason to exist and is just a pain in the ass with no benefit to the consumer.
LikeLike
Reading more into it, the game is also being sold on Steam for $40, not $50. So that’s good.
I haven’t found anything that says there won’t be any modding.
When people say you should fact check before writing articles, this is what they mean.
Though. the no dedicated servers is a bit of a red flag and directly stated by a developer. Turbo seems to be aimed at console players more so than PC, and when they say that the new environment will be on Maniaplanet for PC players has me wondering if it’ll be released separate for TM2 like Stadium was.
LikeLike
Just out of curiosity, what are the “obvious reasons” that led you to avoid trackmania? I actually think it’s fun as hell, even if it gets brain-rapingly infuriating at times (but that really boils down to my lack of skill, not the game). It’s a riot, and judging by your taste in games on the blog here I think you’d really enjoy it.
LikeLike
I hate fun.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Well that’ll do it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“…. I do not believe it!”
LikeLike
Trackmania 2 was sold in 3 pieces (by single enviroment) so I wouldn’t consider it cheaper. Turbo has 4 enviroments. United, Sunrise, original wasn’t cheaper either.
And dedicated servers suck as they fill screen with garbage and fan-made tracks used there are inferior to official ones.
It will be second full-priced game I buy this year after Dirt Rally.
LikeLike