TrackMania United Forever

TrackMania United Forever is a racer, not an offshoot of Sega's hugely successful TrackMania series. Instead, it's a racing game that's (probably) underdeveloped by an independent studio. This means that each track in the game is structured like a semi-populated story, so there are no modes to choose from. Instead, you're actually racing to finish the track in a high speed run, but every time you hit the finish line, you hit a home run and the track flips into a 3D plane.

Sounds easy, but the tracks themselves are pretty damn hard to play. They're fairly standard tracks and are best enjoyed in two ways: you can hop on them, or you can race one of them in a split second and go crazy. There's also a steep learning curve, especially when you're racing against expert drivers, but the game feels very realistic for its racing.

Up to five players can compete at once on a single console, which is definitely a bit of a restriction on the title, since it's online only. But for anyone who's into multiplayer, you can hop online via Wi-Fi, just like any other racing title.

The only way you can take your racing experience online is by using the game's built-in Download Play option. You can either play with your friends via the GameCube link or by hooking up with people who own a copy of the game, like Mario Kart 7 or Forza Motorsport 4. You'll need a friend or two if you want to take a car online and try it out for yourself, but if you're an Xbox Live Gold subscriber, you'll need a few friends, or friends with the Live experience. We'd recommend just going with the two-player offline mode and simply to have someone with an Xbox Live account as a backup. The real reason for this is because the game is so fun that you'll be able to pick up and play, which is what a racing game is all about.

In addition to the Career mode, Live's Racing mode allows you to compete in the World Tour mode as well as online races in the upcoming Track & Track Spotlight for Burnout Paradise. The World Tour mode gives you an overview of what's new in the game and allows you to unlock a ton of new content and abilities. From standard cars to motorbikes to stunt power ups, there are some things to unlock in the game and a ton of different racing suits for you to choose from.

We got to see a wide range of environments, both underground and urban, and a really nice level of detail. While the level of detail is definitely impressive, we really enjoyed seeing the improvements made to all the car models and the environments.

The visuals in the game have been refined a bit. For instance, we saw the enhanced lighting and shadows that both the cars and buildings we saw during our time in the game looked very impressive. We also got a sense that Burnout Paradise is far from being a visual masterpiece, but the game still looked good.

We'll be looking forward to seeing more of the improvements made to the game. Burnout Paradise is scheduled for release on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC this November.

To start off our series of Burnout podcasts, we talked to director of technology and technical art at Criterion, Steve Burnes. The original Burnout was lauded by critics for its impressive graphics and wide range of track designs, but the game still fell short of expectations. The team wanted to be able to create the best-looking, most polished racer ever made, and to do so, it had to take the technology and resources available to the team to make sure that Burnout Paradise was truly a next-generation game.

I've always thought that when the first game was released, people were surprised by the amount of detail that was put into each of the cars, the environment, and the details in the game. But this is no different in Burnout Paradise, so we're taking the technology and the infrastructure we have built in to the next-generation development and making sure that the game doesn't fall short of the expectations of the franchise, but still manages to make something truly spectacular. For example, the game was able to display realistic weather, as well as reflection mapping and motion-capture techniques to give the player a good visual sense of the type of reflection that would occur around him. The developer also said that they knew that the high-resolution textures in the game would help to bump up the quality of the draw distance when racing.

As far as the new graphics are concerned, we've focused on improving the overall presentation of the game. At the moment, our plan is to focus on enhancing all aspects of the visuals to deliver a superior experience to the player. We've already enhanced our game physics model to make it look more lifelike, and we are aiming to improve the individual reflections that are added by each tire's tire.