Trackmania has always been a bit of a mess. It's something as hard-baked into the series' DNA as lightning quick reaction times and the instantaneous restart, and Trackmania Turbo - the accessible console-focussed compendium of all that's great and good about Nadeo's series and that was the last we saw of it - increasingly feels like something of a blip. If you're a veteran, though, you might be pleased to know the new Trackmania is a return to the old ways; this is fussy, frustrating and frequently brilliant, too.
Trackmania - as this new entry is simply known - is a remake of sorts of Trackmania Nations, the popular 2006 entry which helped make the series' name. Essentially it's a return to basics, stripping away most of the excess gained over the years. There's a single car, and essentially a single track type - different surfaces are now folded into the same environment, with smooth tarmac joined by outrageously cambered road, slippery terracotta dirt and oh-my-god-this-is-impossible ice - and the objective is the same as it's always been. Get from one point of a tortuously twisted track to the other. Then do it again, but faster. And again, but faster still.
It's as simple as it ever was, and devilishly addictive. A decent Trackmania course takes no longer than 30 seconds to complete, but a decent Trackmania course will also hold your attention for hours as you shave off millisecond by millisecond of your time until you get somewhere close to perfection. That's as true here as it ever was, and the streamlining of it all to one car type just makes it quicker to get to the core of Trackmania's appeal. There's some of that same weight introduced in Trackmania 2 to its handling, making picking out perfect parabolas and maintaining momentum both satisfying and precise whether you're playing on a gamepad or, in traditional Trackmania style, on a keyboard. It takes something special to impart that feeling on a control system so primitive, and Trackmania's handling is pretty special indeed.