Everyone wants something for nothing and most of the time they want more, TrackMania Nations gives you a whole game free, not only that you get to play against anyone in the world if you want to.
TrackMania is a somewhat known series for the PC is a racing game with a twist, and a loop and normally a few big jumps. This is a puzzle/racing game that has you trying to finish a lap first and then worry about getting a fastest time.
No two tracks look the same and often just finding the end of a race is a challenge due to having to get speeds right and sometimes steering your car in mid air to get through a gap or on to a ramp. The tracks are also unlimited, there is an editor that comes with the download, so new tracks will pop up all the time from other users meaning that there is never a time to get bored of repeating the same old level again and again.
Graphically this is a very pretty game for a free piece of software and the models for the cars look great, it also has very low requirements so even most laptops and lower desktop computers can happily take part in the fun.
Unfortunately there is nothing special about the audio, most of the time it's the same music track playing over or just hearing the sound of your car's engine. The one thing that can get to be a bit of a pain is that when the race is over the national anthem of the winner is blasted out at you so really it's just better to chuck some of your favourite tunes on in the background and turn off what you can in game.
As i said before this game is about getting to the end of a lap, often you will end upside down meaning that you will need to restart, you'll probably have to do this a few times due to suddenly going over a hill to find out you are meant to make a jump or just taking a corner to fast and being flipped off the track. Once you finish your time is put on the scoreboard as is everyone else's, you all then race for the remainder of the time to see if you can end with the fastest time.
Although you can see other peoples car there is no interaction between them, you can't bash them out the way, your car will just pass through theirs. I think this is a novel way to deal with lag as it doesn't have to update you to the position of all the cars straight away as it really doesn't matter so there seems to be a second delay between other cars and you.
You score points by beating other players with higher global scores than you, once a track finishes your global score is updated and you are put on a table for everyone from your country, you keep playing and you will raise through board. The countries score is made up of all the players form that country. At the moment we in the UK are 21st out of all the countries that play so we do need more players as the French are number 1 and we can't have that.
This game is all about fun and competitiveness, there will be tracks that you just want to give up on as they are too hard but if you stick to it normally you'll work it out. Some tracks are very stunt orientated involving many loops and jumps, others are pure high speed which does gave a pretty good feel to the game as there is slight motion blurring past a certain speed.
Well worth getting, it's only a 260meg download for the full game and offers hours of fun, you'll probably want to check out the editor that is very easy to use as you just join parts together and can test the outcome straight away. Probably one of the best freeware games about at the moment and even if you are not a great racing game fan the challenge of the tracks makes it a great game to play with friends.
Link to the Game site (just click the Download button) 
