The looks, as well as the gameplay, may be seen as a bit simple, but this all plays into the core of the game. Trackmania is designed to do one thing, and one thing well, race time trials. So while it does not feature over-complex customizations or graphical effects, its track design and overly fun gameplay are what makes the whole thing stand out. This all means that the game is easy to grasp so that anyone can understand how to play. Of course this does not mean the game is easy, the difficulty is quite challenging, which just adds to the charm and overall appeal.
Cars dropped from a helicopter to begin a race, tracks with numerous loops, jumps, twist and turns, this all lends itself towards how over the top the gameplay is. It is not based in reality at all, but the game offers a bunch of arcade-crazy action that is just superbly fun.
There is split screen local multiplayer as well as online multiplayer. Both of these allow players to play with their friends whether they are in the same room or online somewhere else. This makes for convenience, which is always nice to see.
The graphics have a very arcade-like feel to them that stands out as something that has been designed with this in mind. The colors are bright and the tracks each have their own look, thanks to the locales they are placed in. The whole of the game will run easily at 60fps no matter the platform, which helps to keep the arcade-like feel while also looking sharp, thanks to no dips in the framerate. Overall this is a slick looking racer that performs solidly.
The track creator in the game allows for creation of just about anything one can imagine. What is even better is that players can share these tracks online, which means unlimited replayability due to always having a plethora of new tracks to race on.
While not necessary for the game and a bit limited, there are some painting customization for the available cars, which allow for a more individualistic look, though this only goes so far as most cars do look the same no matter the color.
This is a time trial game and it shows, players will need to reset after reset each course in order to learn the track to get the best times. One mistake and that record is gone. Only pure perfection succeeds here. Some may enjoy this type of challenge, other though will most likely get frustrated.
The music in the game is basically techno with thumping beats. The majority sounds pretty similar and it may become grating for those that spend a ton of time in the game. While not overly bad, it definitely gets old after a while.
If you create a custom track that you enjoy, or rather, if the game generates a custom track that you particularly enjoy, you can save it and even share it with friends who own the game.
Even though they could stand to be a little sharper, the visuals are very detailed. You can easily see and make out in detail the leaves as they rise above the ground once you pass on them, or the mud caked on the car you are driving.
The water visual effects are phenomenal as well. Especially the splash effects.
The sound effects are brilliant as well. From the buzzing sounds coming from the cars to the nature sounds coming from the track you are currently racing.
Races take part in five different countries around the world: USA, Australia, Spain, Sweden and Wales. Each of them with unique features and demands. Australia for example is gravel-based with tight zones and twists. Spain is mountainous with little margin for error.
In career mode you can spend earned credits on improving your facilities and as a result the effectiveness of your engineers.
You also get to micromanage your career, especially when it comes to sponsorship deals where you will constantly try to find better and better deals to increase your earnings.
Stages are procedurally generated as you go. This means that Dirt 4 has virtually endless replayability.
The custom stage creator called 'Your Stage' is fairly simple to use. You choose only the length and the complexity of the stage and on which country your race will take place. There are five countries to choose from: Australia, USA, Spain, Sweden and Wales.
While certain car categories and eras are well-covered with lots of different models, some eras are left behind. The 2000s for example are represented by only a handful of car models.
Users can tune and customize their cars to their liking. This makes for a great way to change how a car drives to make it control more to your liking. There are two different drive modes available for each car, Drift and Grip. Drift allows for a more loose driving that makes for an easy way to drift around corners and curves. Grip is a more controlled experience where the car is more stable on the road. Besides these two options users can customize many other aspects such as tire pressure or breaking power.
Much like Burnout or Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Need for Speed features open world gameplay where in the player can pick or choose which races they would like to compete in by driving around the map to certain markers. This makes for a more realistic environment due to the fact that you can just drive around to anywhere you want. The open world is loosely based on Los Angeles, an d is a good sized map for plenty of exploring.
Being that the game is always online, there will be many players on the map that can be interacted with by joining their crew or just flat out racing anyone at anytime. This aspect of the game is quite fun and players can spend hours not even bothering with the story section of the game by just hanging out with friends and racing. Once a crew is joined players can race as teams as well, so this give a nice group competitive aspect to the game, where everything is not so competitive but requires cooperation.
The game looks quite good. All races take place at night or dusk/dawn, making for great lighting on the tracks with good reflective lighting as well as wet roads that look quite sharp. There are also little jaggies to be found when using anti-aliasing, which makes for a very smooth looking game as well. Everything about the graphics speaks to the polish that the game is trying to display, and it exceeds any expectations on the graphics front overall.
There is a good mix of races on the map that players can choose to compete in. Traditional races, drifting events as well as Gymkhana events ensure that the layer will never get too board with doing the same thing over and over again. Which is a good feature for a racing game as many tend to do only one or two things.
While racing the course will shift from day to night and back again, numerous time, though these transitions are done poorly and are a bit jarring. This ruins the immersion of the game as it is quite noticeable and happens frequently.
While the roster of vehicles is diverse, the amount is quite less than games like Forza which is limiting to those that would like to see many more cars to play around with.
The story sequences of the game are played out through live action in a very unappealing way. the characters are often way over the top and unbelievable and are just flat out poorly written. While it can be appreciated that these are caricatures, the demographic that they are trying to target with them is pretty unpalatable.
When racing against AI opponents the cars will often use a technique called "rubberbanding" where in it is impossible to lap cars no matter how fast you are going as once you start getting too far ahead, the cars behind you will speed up unnaturally in order to keep the race more difficult. This can be frustrating an immersion breaking as it is very unrealistic as well annoying that the game does not up the difficulty through the AI with a more natural and believable way of driving.
The game will highlight ones route for a race with blue arrows on the road, being that the race are mostly nighttime this means that certain obstacle can be difficult to see. The way the races work, the route is unknown until the race begins and is exacerbated by the hard to see road due to it being night. Basically the more difficult races will need to be raced numerous times until the racer is familiar with the course. While this has always been an issue with open world racers, Need for Speed definitely has not made any improvements and may even be considered worse at navigation than others.
The game forces a constant internet connection for the game, meaning those that would like to play offline due to not having good or constant internet can not play the game. This also means there is no pause menu, so even when racing solo, there will be no way to stop the action for say when the doorbell rings or a phone call comes in.
Super fun game that will surely keep you on the edge of your couch holding onto your controller. A little bit like GTA, but you can't kill, get out of your car, but you're sure to run into some trouble once in a while.