So, TM2 was finally released today. I've been playing the multiplayer beta a bit for the past two weeks, but I've really been looking forward to the singleplayer part, the better to be able to drive a specific track however many times I want, with only my own time to beat.

So far I like it very much overall, but I'm not all that keen on the new car. The way it handles, and the way the tracks are made, they should have named it DriftMania, since it all seems to be about drifting now. I'm not a huge fan of that, but I can live with it.

The canyon environment is quite interesting, and very visually beautiful. I haven't tried too many tracks yet, but it seems to be more given to "realistic" racing than previous environments.

And that in itself may be a problem. TM Nations Forever has literally millions of users (just under 10 million registered accounts) which is very impressive, even for a free game. One reason it has become so popular is the ways it sets itself apart from other racing games, not least of which is the acrobatic and stunt-inducing stadium environment. If Nadeo were hoping to lure a sizable portion of the "free players" to buy TM2, I don't think they'll succeed. The Canyon environment simply feels too "serious" compared to stadium. And the next title lined up for the new engine is called "Valley", so there's no sign of improvement in the near future either. If Nadeo had made Stadium the environment of the first release, I think they'd have sold a lot more copies (several hundred percent more) than they are going to sell with canyon.

Has anybody else tried it?

I can has demo?

As far as I can tell, no, you can't :-(

You can has plenty of YouTube videos though.

Yeah, I bought the beta and was happy of the final update yesterday. So far I love it ! But I do share some of your points : for example, only one car, so only one driving style. But that's okay.

Yeah, the tracks are more "realistic", even if you still have some good stunts parts even in the solo campaign. Visually i find it quite stunning and the impression of speed is really here!

Is there or will there be a GOG clan for Trackmania 2 ? That would be cool!

I bought it during the beta too, and played it a lot for a while. But I get so tired of the time attack mode, and the only proper rounds server that I found was... well, let's just say the people there were a bit better than me. I must be getting old or something, I used to be _good_ at TrackMania.. anyhoo, I got a bit fed up with the whole multiplayer thing and besides I haven't got the time to focus on multiplayer for one game when there's so many good single player games being released.

But I had a lot of fun with the single player today. TM2 is pretty much just more of the same but with better graphics and a cool new car. I love the environment and all the possibillities (there are tons of exciting track pieces to work with). It don't think it's more serious than any of the other environments either, there are some really crazy tracks out there.

I doubt I'll be playing this for as long as the previous TrackManias. As I said, I love the new environment & car, but it gets a bit samey after a while. It's weird to go from seven environments in TMUF to one in TM2. I always appreciated all the different environments in previous TM-games, and it would be hard to pick a favourite. So I miss that variety.

I have to say I'm glad they didn't make a new Stadium-environment, though. In fact, I'm glad to be rid of it, mostly due to the annoying Stadium-only players.

(actually I fear we'll get a similar situation with TM2, because as long as they're _selling_ new environments then the community will get really fractured or everyone will end up just playing the most popular environment)

Well, when you have a player base where 90% are playing a version of the game which only contains stadium, that's what you're going to get.

Personally, I love stadium. Even though I have TMUF, I still play stadium the most, by a large margin. Also, stadium tracks are more fun to make (and easier too) than the other environments. Bay is pretty cool too, with much of the same arcade-y feel. I play coast sometimes as well, just for the driving challenge, but I wouldn't want to make tracks for it.

From a purely economic viewpoint, I still think it's a big mistake not to put stadium in TM2. They have millions of players which they don't make a dime off of, which could potentially be persuaded to convert to being paying customers. But canyon is simply much too different. If they haven't bought TMUF, then they won't buy Canyon either.

And that is why I'm glad to be rid of the free players. As long as TMUF was compatible with the free version, most TMUF-owners wound up playing on Stadium-only servers as well. So for people like me, who find it completely ridiculous to just stick to one environment when the others are so much fun as well, it was often hard to find decent MP-servers to play on.

But due to the way they're selling the environments one by one, I fear a similar thing will happen with TM2. One environment will be more popular than the others and servers that run more than the most popular environment will exclude players that don't have the other environments. So most servers will probably just run the most popular environment, leading to less variety. I prefer Island, Desert, Alpine and possibly Bay over Stadium, personally. Desert is probably the best environment in the game. Alpine is extremely underrated. It's not that I don't like Stadium; by all means, it's quite fun. But it's far from the best environment in the game, IMO, and I'm quite fed up with it by now. Well, it's a sequel so it's supposed to have new stuff. Stadium is old.

Besides, those Stadium-players would just complain that it isn't free (which they already do to some extent). We already know TrackMania Nations, as a commercial project, didn't work as intended (the advertising model failed), so I understand why Nadeo aren't keen on trying that route again.

And what would a commercial TM2 featuring only Stadium contain to make it a worthwhile purchase anyway? I mean, Stadium as of TMUF is a very varied and complete environment, and I can't really imagine what they could add to it to justify the price tag. Even if Stadium was included with Canyon, they'd probably have to offer some pretty hefty updates to it to make it appealing for the people who've stuck with the free version until now. TBH I think trying to convert the free players who haven't already bought a commercial version is going to be pretty futile no matter how they do it.