After months of nothing much I get two – two! – very much anticipated DS games in the same week. Castlevania is, based on the first couple of hours, a bit of a disappointment, but Trackmania?

Well, based on a quick go, it’s exactly what I wanted. I’ve only done straight races (actually time trials, really) so far, but I can say that the controls and game engine are spot on. The framerate is perfect (so far) and the car controls as it should in a Trackmania game. I’ve got gold medals on the ten races in the Stadium and Desert environments at Practice level. They weren’t very difficult, but they took enough retries to make me wonder if I’m not going to have a problem with the game’s difficulty at higher levels.

Fingers crossed that it won’t get too hard. Right now that’s the only potential problem I’m seeing with the game.