Many of you will know racing game series Trackmania from some of the incredible “just push forward” GIFs that you may have seen on Reddit. Known for the ability to create insane courses in its Trackbuilder and for the high speed crashes you will inevitably have Trackmania has quickly built a reputation as one of the faster and wildest racers around. Trackmania Turbo, the first entry on current generation consoles, continues this legacy of incredible crashes and blinding speed, but how does it fare overall?

Trackmania Turbo comes with a surprisingly large amount of content for what is a budget release game, with 200 solo campaign events, a separate campaign for Double Driver, multiple local multiplayer modes, online modes and the Trackbuilder. This game definitely doesn’t suffer from content being spread too thin with the massive number of events you can participate in. Your success over these myriad of events is measured by how quickly you can finish them, with the game giving you a ranking against the rest of the world, your country and state after each event. While the name of the game is to unlock medals to progress to the next stages, I found myself regularly retrying courses just to sneak up a few ranking against my fellow Victorians.

Actual events vary wildly in length and content, ranging from quick 30 second time trials to multi lap races that can for a few minutes, and cover a number of different surface types that all cause your car to behave differently. Solo races and Double Driver events also cause your car’s handling to completely change as well. In solo races your car is much faster and you’ll need to drift and slow down more often to make corners, whereas in Double Driver your car is much heavier, resulting in slower speeds and much weightier handling. The only issue with these events is the lengthy load times when going into them. Once in an event, resetting and started again is instant, but the initial load time can sometimes be longer than the actual event itself.

The most fun I had with Trackmania Turbo was in the various local multiplayer modes with my friends. When so many games are moving away from local multiplayer it’s great to see a title that doubles down on it. The bulk of my time was spent playing Hot Seat, a mode where the controller is passed from person to person, while they expend their fuel trying to set the best time. With the depleting fuel tank and a limit on the number of laps you can do, this leads to some tense moments as your friend is on a faster time than you, but is also almost coasting on vapors. The option of having the game randomly generate a track for you to race on is also a really neat idea and stops people from winning due to remembering tracks. The Double Driver mode was more fun than I expected as well. There’s something special about you and your friend each controlling 50% of the cars control and trying to coordinate well enough to not careen wildly off a cliff. My favourite inclusion, however, is actually the music booster option. Having the ability to pump up the beats at will wasn’t something I knew I wanted until I had it.

Speaking of cliffs, Trackmania Turbo looks excellent, with four main environment types that can still vary quite widely depending on the architecture and how vertical the creators have decided that event should be. The biggest variety comes from the sheer number of options available to construct the tracks with, and this goes for the Trackbuilder mode as well. Massive jumps over empty pits, often requiring pinpoint precision to stay on the road, giant loops, heaps of obstacles and wall riding are only some of the variety of things you will see during your playtime.

You will find all of these options within the extremely comprehensive Trackbuilder within the game, leading to lots of variations in the tracks you can create. There are four versions of the Trackbuilder to choose from to begin with; The Beginner Trackbuilder only gives you limited options of what you can use. Normal Trackbuilder gives you further blocks and options, and also allows you to create gaps. The Advanced Trackbuilder gives you access to absolutely every block within the game, and also lets you terraform the environment. Finally, we have the Random Generator, which does exactly what its name suggests. While the various options are great to have, the game doesn’t necessarily do a very good job of explaining how things go together or how you can swap between land types and surface types. It’s one of the few negatives within Trackmania Turbo.

Altogether, Trackmania Turbo is an incredibly dense package that includes a wide range of content and modes for you to enjoy on your own or with friends. While the load times can be frustrating at times and the Trackbuilder could do with a little more instruction on how to use it, the game is incredibly fun and well worth a purchase by anybody with an interest in racing games or someone who is looking for a new party game.