Got my predicting legs back, just needed to pay less attention! As usual, should of gone with my gut on Cinematography & Effects (it always goes to the tech-hog, never the ones you'd think looking at the award itself) and the leads (figured it wouldn't be unknowns in both, should of swapped them is all).
FOR POSTERITY (since Angelfire won't be around forever and its good to get it in one spot):
Didn't pay attention this year... Only put off by two of these - passing over Fincher and then rewarding Burton for making another movie that looked the same as all his other ones (it's played). But really a very strong year (need to see King's Speech, don't let myself get mad that a movie I haven't seen won ever since it turned out I really liked Gladiator).
I can think of no better example of how much loading times and other such bullshit can color ones impression of a game than Trackmania here. Here we have a racing game that actually makes quite ludicrous demands of its players - in order to actually win you are going to have to find and hit your lines more or less perfectly, and the slightest mistake will render your entire race essentially null. One of the tracks here I found myself redoing a good 30 times before I won.
This sounds like an unmitigated disaster - the sort of thing that would frustrate to the point where a title would be banished to the inner reaches of hell, never to be touched again. Instead, it was addicting and - shockingly - fun. How did they manage such a feat? Simple - they made restarting as simple and painless as possible. Unlike most games, where reloading from a checkpoint will throw you to (at least) a good few seconds of loading, here pressing the restart key (positioned helpfully near your steering controls) instantly takes you back to the start - the only delay is the 3-2-1 to start the race. Equally important is that the races are kept as short as possible - typically no more than 20-30 seconds. Those which are longer (several tracks are actually circuits, not a point a to point b affair) are also far more forgiving in terms of the times required.
Something should also be said of the opponents. Instead of racing cars on the track, this entirely a ghost affair. This may sound bad - who doesn't like interactivity - but given the nature of the game (the need to hit lines, the degree to which mistakes will ruin your run), I would imagine having opponents on the track would be something of a minor disaster. The presence of ghosts running the same route every time also means they can be leaned on as a way of seeing what to do and not to do, and also means you can know midway whether you're on track to get a gold, since you're literally racing alongside it. I should also mention that Trackmania boasts an extremely robust track editor, but the fact is I had plenty of fun with the stuff out of the box here.
Finally, this game is free! You could almost call it a demo, but its a bit too full-featured to be that. The proper version boasts additional car-types, but based on my experiences with those other cars (in actual demos), I'm going to say you can do quite fine by just the F1-style cars here.
