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Much to the surprise of many, this won’t be one of those epic reviews you’ve seen from me in the past (like Paris to Dakar – man!!). I’m trying to cut back, trim some of the ham off these things, ya know. But then again, I most certainly won’t sacrifice “quality” for brevity just to appease those who can’t hang in there for what – a five minute read? That’s probably stretching it a bit even. At any rate, let’s get rollin!
I’m going to go so far as to say Finne is a household name if you’re a die-hard MTMer, and for good reason. My 7yr-old son knows him, loves the speed of his tracks. The wife is kinda so-so, but I’m working on her – the weekly tests I administer help, I think. But if this is the first time you’ve heard of Finne, I highly encourage you to head over to the track section of MTMG, sort the list by author, and sample 3 or 10 of this guy’s stuff. Afterwards I’d bet money (Mal’s money – I’m busted til next week) you too would become a Finne fan!
This track is kind of an old one (made in 2000), however it’s a recent upload here at MTMG, hence a review is very much in order. I recall running it long ago, and thinking, “my goodness – this thing goes on forever!” Well, I wasn’t quite the track enthusiast I am today, and was still fairly new to the MTM 2 world. I had completely forgotten what this one was like til I ran it in preparation to write this review. As a matter of fact, I pulled in 4 others to run it with me so I could get a feel for its “race worthiness”. The first part was hilarious because of the way the track begins with a semi-enclosed tunnel structure that loops around. It’s tailor made for crashes, lots of crashes, and we did just that – all of us
There are sections where you’ll briefly end up in various types of tunnel-like structures, but the majority of this 9-minute plus run takes place on the open road. Speed Jumping, as the name implies, does in fact consist of a several speed oriented jumps, and a few of them are quite interesting. I think the one that sticks out in my mind the most is at the beginning portion of the long stretch to checkpoint (cp) 4, you hit a jump, and just as gravity starts to kick in and you’re on a downward descent, your rear wheels strike a platform which forces the front end of the truck downward, enabling you to barely miss an overhead wall. It’s pretty cool, and I certainly have never seen a jump put together like that before.
On the whole, I’m somewhat at a lost with respect to how I feel about it...exactly. I almost get the impression, and bare in mind this is an old track, that he was trying to come up with different looks to give you in terms of turns, angles, and some of the structures he used, however, a lot of it seems somewhat repetitive. Yes, it does wind you up and send you in circles, and in a subtle way, includes a few challenges where negotiating corners are concerned, but the major drawback to me were the shortcuts, and there are tons of them. I spent a little bit of time exploring the shorts, learning where I could cut and where I couldn’t, and of the 12 cp’s, I think 2 and 4 were the only ones that force you to use the conventional path. Again, it’s about a 9 minute run, and I’d say you could easily chop it down to a sub 8-min run.
Overall I think this track is probably best suited for the person who’s unaware of shortcuts and simply wants to go on a casual cruise and maybe work on a few skills. He or she would definitely enjoy the speed this track offers, along with the nifty little turns he’s thrown in. It’s certainly not a bad track by any means, but I tend to think most professional racers would say it lacks “umph”, ya, you know? That quality that makes you say, “Oh yeah, let’s do that one again!!” And just for GP’s (general purposes), a few tracks that did give me an electric charge are “Jumping Screwballs”, “Roller Coaster City”, “Only For Speeding Lunatics”, and “Fasten Your Seatbelts” to name a few. : )
Well, after throwing in .35 cents, inserting all the collected data, and turning the hand-crank several (dozen) times, this one kicked out a “Copey Rating” of 7.85 out of 10 possible points. Still, I can’t over emphasize enough that this track is nearly 2 yrs old, so Finne was undoubtedly still honing his skills. In my opinion it’s just too full of holes shortcut-wise for its length, and I mean huge, gaping holes. The only other thing I can think of to say is if he’s disappointed in the rating I gave this track...I only hope he’s able to find it in his heart to leave me on is Christmas List. Hehehe Until next time...
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