Genre: Racing
Developer: DICE
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Released On: June 17, 2003
# of Players: 1-8
ERSB: Everyone
Supports: Xbox Live, 480p, 5.1 Surround
MSRP: $49.99
Also On: None
Website: Xbox.com
Better Than: most online games
While I’ve never been a huge fan of playing racing games with a keyboard, the original Midtown Madness games on the PC never interested me very much – scratch that, not one bit. However being the racing game nut that I am I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take my skills online and whip some serious butt with Microsoft Game Studio’s newest Xbox addition Midtown Madness 3. Developed this time around by DICE (the company responsible for the oh so under-appreciated Rallisport Challenge) I just knew that I was in for something special. But was my $50 well spent? Well, yes and no…
Midtown Madness 3 is some seriously over-the-top wacky racing action. The game offers two separate cities to race in, Paris and Washington D.C., and let me tell you they are absolutely HUGE. It has been nearly a week now and I am just starting to identify some of the streets on the map but it’s going to take maybe an entire month before I think I’ll be able to drive around without the aid of the map. In these two cities you are given an assortment of vehicles to choose from ranging from city busses to limousines all the way down the line to Mini Coopers and Dodge Vipers, each with various color schemes to choose from. Being the racing game fan that I am I was pleasantly surprised that the game features some decent physics; they’re not too realistic like you’d find in Project Gotham Racing though each vehicle has a very distinct weight and feel to them that makes for some fun power-sliding and quick 180’s. The game’s controls are not configurable though I find them to be perfect as is: right trigger gas, left trigger brake, A button is e-brake and the left analog (or d-pad) is used for steering. Pretty standard stuff. Also you can use the right analog to check your side to side view or to look behind you, and clicking it in will zoom the city map to a full screen transparent view for a quick look at which turn to take without completely blocking your view of the action. Manual gearing is also available via use of the B and X buttons, but I found them to be rather useless in this game.
"The single player mode in the game, to be perfectly honest, is very ho-hum."
|
The single player mode in the game, to be perfectly honest, is very ho-hum. While some of the play modes can put a trace of a grin on my face, others just left me wanting to put a nice Xbox controller shaped indentation in the wall of my living room. Blitz racing pits you against the clock in a mad dash through various checkpoints on your way to the finish line. The time allotment is adjusted depending on which car you choose, which is a nice touch, though I find that the game tends to give you more than enough time to get to where you’re going. Checkpoint Race is similar to Blitz except you’ll be racing against 7 computer controlled opponents. The computer A.I. is very sharp, if not cheap, so don’t make a wrong turn or crash into anything or you might as well start over. Cruise mode is just that, pick a car and a city and drive around without any time limit looming over your head. This is kinda fun really because it gives you the opportunity to check out some of the sights and get to know the layout of the city, and trust me you’re going to need to learn it. The real heart of the single player mode however is the Work Undercover mode, MM3’s “story mode”. In undercover mode you are given the opportunity to start out as a rookie driver and make your way on through the ranks and ultimately end up a Private Eye. The game offers two separate scenarios depending on which city you choose, however both are more or less the same aside from the characters involved in the story. You’ll be delivering pizzas, following mobsters, driving people around town in a limo, taking them for test drives as a car salesman and all sorts of crazy missions. This might sound like fun, but unfortunately DICE went a bit too far in the voice acting department with the spoken dialogue. The voice talent (if you can call it that) showcases some of the most clichéd French and Italian accents ever uttered in the existence of bad foreign accents, it’s just brutal to listen to. Combine simple driving errors with your passengers yelling at you to “Slow down!” in their bad accents when your timer is telling you to speed up and you have a recipe for ‘Xbox Ala Thrown Out The Window’ (it’s a soufflé). I know that they were trying to add a little spice to the otherwise plain and simple gameplay, but man oh man it’s just plain bad. While none of the offline single player modes are all that
"There are even such little details as clothing stores with individually rendered mannequins in the window."
|
exciting they are necessary to complete in order to unlock the game’s secret cars and paint schemes, which can also be used online. Split screen and system link options are also available for some good old fashioned local area multiplayer action.
So by now you’re wondering how on Earth anyone could possibly recommend this game as a purchase, and that’s when MM3 comes screaming down the fast lane with Xbox Live directly to your front door with a special delivery of “Oh my God this is so much fun!”. Signing into Xbox Live opens up new play modes not available in single player racing. First off is Tag in which one player is “it” and everyone else is trying like mad to avoid being tagged. When a player is tagged, a clock in the corner of the screen begins to count to a predetermined time limit and should they not be able to tag another player before time expires they are out of the game and can only watch as everyone else is weeded out until one player is left victorious. Hunter mode is similar to tag except one player starts out as a police car and must run into (or tag) other players upon which they become police cars themselves and must immediately switch gears from running from the law to Johnny Law himself. The last player to be caught is the winner, though the cops must still catch them in order for the match to end which is pretty pointless really. Stayaway mode is just the opposite of tag. One player will have a rabbit (“it”) and must try like crazy to keep away from all other players in an attempt to accumulate the most amount of time. Online mode also allows for checkpoint racing, though I personally find it to be rather dull when compared to the other modes of play. Cruise mode is available for online play as well, and is fun for groups of friends that want to drive around the town in search of jumps or secrets and just hang out, show off your newest paint schemes and cars, etc. Lastly is Capture the Gold which is easily my favorite online play mode. In CTG, gold is placed in a random location on the map (shown as a blue dot) and all players must make a mad dash to get it first. Upon picking up the gold a new blue dot will appear on the map indicating where to take the gold to drop it off for points. En route to the drop-off location the other players will have the opportunity to steal the gold back from you by ramming into you, which yields them 5 points and a few seconds of invulnerability to allow them to time to pick a new road and make a run for it. For added multiplayer fun, Tag, Stay Away and CTG matches can be made into team matches and let me tell you the action gets intense when you’re trying to coordinate strategies over the headset with your team. All online modes allow the host to choose a time of day (Morning, Noon, Evening and Night), weather conditions (Clear or Rainy) and even what time of year it is (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) which will change the color of the leaves and determine whether or not the rain is actually snow. There are numerous other options available that I just don’t have enough time to go into. Unfortunately it is not possible to have city vehicle or pedestrian traffic during online play which at first seemed like quite a bummer, but after playing so many online and offline matches I can honestly say that I’d prefer it this way anyways.
The developers of MM3 have obviously taken a lot of time working on the game’s look and feel, as the overall presentation is very clean. The menus are laid out in a simple and effective scheme with all options easily within reach and right where you’d expect them to be. Graphically the game is wonderful, DICE went into so much detail it’s not even funny. At first glance I wasn’t all too impressed, especially considering they were the same developers that brought us Rallisport which just might have the best graphics on the Xbox’s entire line-up. However upon playing the game for a decent amount of time I started to notice all of the little touches that really make this game stand apart from the crowd. Each car in the game is modeled rather well, not the best but certainly above average and considering you sometimes see 20 cars on-screen at once it’s quite staggering.
"Midtown Madness 3 has fast become my favorite Xbox Live game and has upped the bar for all online games to come."
|
Car damage is done very well also, ranging from shattered windows to missing panels and hoods and even mufflers dragging on the ground. The pedestrians follow the same trend and are animated very well though sadly you cannot run them over; instead they will either jump out of your way or you will magically pass through them. Each and every glass surface in the game from car windows to even building windows is reflective, which is very cool. Instead of seeing a simple texture of a window you see buildings and sunlight reflecting instead, and the reflected sunlight can be so bright during the sunset hours that you almost want to put on sunglasses – truly awesome lighting. Not only is all of the glass reflective but also breakable; hit a storefront window too hard and it shatters into hundreds of little pieces. It’s at this time you’ll notice that each and every storefront and window you crash into is not simply a texture showing the room’s interior but actually a 3-walled room you can look into. There are even such little details as clothing stores with individually rendered mannequins in the window. The roadside detail gets even more impressive when each and every light pole you hit showers numerous sparks on the road and newspaper racks throw dozens of papers into the streets. The weather effects are nice with reflections on wet roads and tire marks left in snowy patches of grass (helpful when you’re in pursuit of another car), and the draw distance is better than average too; you might see a building or tower in the distance come into view through a mild fog but it looks like the kind of smog or haze that you’d expect to see in real life so it’s forgivable. The frame rate is not as smooth as other Xbox racing titles though which is a big downer. I’d guess it’s a steady 30 which is by no means bad, but I’ve grown accustomed to 60 in my Xbox racing games and was really hoping it would have been also. After a few hours of play though, you hardly notice and with all of the little details you likely won’t care either. The sound effects in the game are also very well done. You’ll hear birds chirping, tires squealing and sirens blaring as you race around town. DICE has also included a very keen horn effect: when you pass an oncoming car that’s honking at you the pitch of the horn dips from high to low just as you’d hear it in real life. Musically MM3 is nothing impressive as there aren’t many tracks to listen to (I think each city has one track for a grand total of two plus the menu music), but thankfully the custom soundtrack feature is supported so you can race to your favorite tunes. At launch the game has a bug that plays the same song over and over repeatedly, though with downloadable content support I imagine it will be fixed very soon.
So does this game take the checkered flag? It honestly all depends on whether or not you have Xbox Live. The offline single player racing might be worthy of a rent to see what all of the fuss is about and to get a taste of what Live play can offer, but otherwise it’s a very average game with some pretty graphics and some very irritating voice acting. There are lots of secret cars and paint jobs to find however, so if you like the sound of scouring the city looking for hidden goodies then it does have that going for it. When you take this baby on Xbox Live though, it’s a whole different beast. Midtown Madness 3 has fast become my favorite Xbox Live game and has upped the bar for all online games to come. This game is so incredibly fun and addictive that it has interfered with my sleeping habits, my only real complaint. Maybe it’s time to invest in some Tylenol PM. See you online!
The Good
+ Excellent level design.
+ Beautiful graphics.
+ Online play is a blast! The Bad
- Ear-bleeding voice acting.
- Little things to run into everywhere you turn.
- Custom Soundtrack glitch.
The Stupid
? Ability to use cheats online.
*GamersMark.com reviewed this game with a copy of the title purchased from retail.
