TrackMania Nations Forver - Great Free Game

This one hit me by surprise. Nadeo, a company I have honestly never heard of before, is breaking some ground by offering an entire game for free. Normally, when you say free game to me, I think of Open Source Quake Clones that can get a bit repetitive after a while (not that there is anything wrong with them at all; they can be perfect sometimes! But there are quite a few out there. Many of these projects get better with each release, so check them out!). If you aren’t keen on it already, Track Mania Nations Forever is a racing game; but one that’s designed with easy accessibility and lots of fun in mind for the player.

The game consists of 65 different tracks, each with varying levels of difficulty. Most are short little races where you go through a set of obstacles to reach the finish in a certain amount of time (at least through the beginning stages that I have played). You race in high-flying, unbreakable formula-one cars while hip techno beats loop through the background. It’s actually very relaxing, engaging, and top notch fun.

The stages themselves are multi-tiered affairs, with impossible jumps and banks. This only loans itself to the fun. When you first install you have to create an account with your e-mail address and set your region. This is useful because your stats get loaded up to the international leader boards, where there are literally hundreds of thousands of other players to compete against. You can also have head to head multiplayer matches against these players.

One particularly innovative/retro/fun gimmick they throw in is the ability to use 3D glasses with the game; the red and blue kind. This is actually pretty fun to play with. Here is a screenshot I took:

Other notable features include a Car Painting feature, which is quite capable, and a level designer, so you are not limited to the default set of 65 maps, though it should keep you occupied for quite some time. I should also say here that the game loads incredibly fast and keeps you in the racing mindset.

Again, this is a casual type of game designed with fun in mind. It’s very easy for anyone to pick up and master. The download is about 700 Megabytes, so I would recommend using Steam to actually download the game.

You can get more info and download it from their site as well: TrackMania Nations Forever