While looking for more games like Excite Truck, I gave Trackmania a try. I prefer my racing games somewhat detached from reality, and TM’s approach was enjoyable, for a time.

First off, the two instalments on DS are almost identical in terms of features, presentation, etc. The first has three different themes, and their accompanying cars handle differently. The second swaps out two of these themes for three other ones, and has new tracks. That’s about it. The main meat of the game is a race mode where you try to outperform car ghosts’ times for medals, gradually unlocking higher difficulties until you reach your personal limit (for me it was Hard; I never saw an Extreme track).

Courses have a realistic look but aren’t concerned with portraying a space that would exist in reality. This gives a pleasing tinge of surreality as your car performs loop-de-loops or jumps between ramps suspended in air. The smaller second mode, Platform, gets even more absurd as you traverse an obstacle course without time limits. It’s not exactly Trials, since it’s 3D and more concerned with maintaining speed and trajectory when appropriate than twitchy precision techniques.

The third mode, Puzzle, ties into the games’ extensive track creation tools. I didn’t bother with these features too much, but there’s lots of room for creativity here if you have the patience for using the touchscreen. It opens the possibility for custom tracks, especially with Turbo’s use of the now irrelevant Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. They also have multiplayer, which I didn’t make use of.

I played through all the solo content I could handle over a couple of days sick in bed, and had a jolly little time. I preferred the cars with better handling, but every theme’s tracks are designed around the car anyway. As long as you’re able to adjust your expectations of yourself to be satisfied not getting the gold medal every time, it’s fun to see what new tricks the designers came up with in the next track. They do often push the DS a bit far, with framerates dropping on certain themes, but generally it looks and plays fine. Also understandably for DS, the tracks are a bit simpler than what you’d get in the console instalments, although the second game gets more ambitious with it. Still not a match for Excite Truck in my book, but decent little games nonetheless.