GAMECENTER.COM - Reviews - Midtown Madness 2 (original) (raw)
Midtown Madness 2
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CNET Gamecenter Review
By Gordon Goble
(10/2/2000)
The good: Two wonderful new cities, ready to be explored; several new vehicles; wide assortment of racing modes; strong multiplayer component; convincing smoke effects; totally thrilling San Francisco hills.
The bad: No championship mode or continuity; appallingly uninspiring incentives; cityscapes not used to their full capabilities; "arcade-ish" physics; inconsistent crash detection; weak damage modeling; boxy peripheral vehicles; idiotic AI; look and feel of a two-year-old game.
The bottom line: While the Midtown Madness cities are typically superb, most of the game is déjà vu.
Multiplayer: Up to eight players
ESRB rating: E (Everyone)
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It seems like only yesterday that PC race fans were being wowed by Microsoft's pioneering journey into urban driving freedom, Midtown Madness. But it was nearly a year and a half ago, and the action driving landscape has seen a real upheaval in the interim. GT Interactive's Driver has since paired a similar open-ended city-driving concept with challenging extracurricular activities, and EA's Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed cornered the market on beauty and versatility. Yet Microsoft has opted to stay the course for Midtown's hotly anticipated sequel, pumping out a lackluster rehash that lacks imagination and in some ways is inferior to the first.
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To be fair, Midtown 2 doubles the city quotient this time around--forsaking the original's condensed adaptation of Chicago for two new venues, San Francisco and London--and that in itself surely kept returning developer Angel Studios as busy as the proverbial beaver. And the game does incorporate a flock of cool new vehicles with the existing roster of American muscle cars, Euro-roadsters, semi trucks, and large people-movers. Look for the capable Aston Martin DB7 Vantage, the surprisingly punchy VW New Beetle RSi, and the fearsome Light Tactical Vehicle as particular highlights.
Like the original, Midtown 2 presents four modes of racing, including the unrestricted test-drive of Cruise mode, the time trials of Blitz, the charted course of Circuit, and the choose-your-own-route of Checkpoint. It also shines as a multiplayer game, offering excellent frame rates and two unique play styles designed for human-vs.-human competition. And with a pair of impressive semi-working miniature cities in front of you, including peripheral automobiles, operating traffic lights, streetcars, subways, drawbridges, concealed shortcuts, and terrified but nonsquishable pedestrians, there's a ton of terrain to explore and much havoc to be wrought. In fact, the undulating streets of San Francisco are guaranteed to raise goose bumps on even the most unflappable driver.
Apart from the new Crash Course training mode, however, the basic drill remains curiously stagnant. Where, for instance, are the incentives? Why does the game focus solely on single, isolated races? What happened to the concept of championship modes and cumulative results? What about an upgrade or repair shop? Instead, Angel opts to reward good driving with new paint jobs; user-definable control over such seemingly mundane settings as environmental conditions and traffic density; and a few unlocked cars--several of which are inferior to those we already have at our disposal. Frankly, that's just not enough.
Stranger still is how little of each delightfully designed cityscape is utilized in a given event. Simply put, Midtown 2 courses are a bit on the lame side, short and tame and rarely giving you the opportunity to, say, do a little reverse tracking in a big honkin' truck and bulldoze the bejeezus out of the oncoming competition. There's not exactly an overabundance of circuits either, so don't be shocked if you see most everything there is to see in your first day or two with the game. Certainly a custom track editor would go far to alleviate boredom.
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