Midtown Madness 2 Review (original) (raw)

The subtitle of this review is actual text taken from the opening screen of Midtown Madness 2, and everyone should be thankful that the conscientious folks at Microsoft (or at least their lawyers) give such good advice. Be particularly thankful for the "real life" portion of that sentence, since gamers clearly have difficulty distinguishing between their virtual and real lives. This game, as does its predecessor, encourages extreme anti-social driving, the kind that even puts the fine drivers in the city of Boston to shame-lord help us all if we took that to the "real" roads of the world.

For those of us who like to drive in our virtual lives, the game includes a generous assortment of stuff: 20 drivable vehicles (eleven are carryovers from the previous version), two detailed cities (London and San Francisco, the unusual geography of which makes it one of the most entertaining racing towns in existence) and six race types (the single-player "Crash Course" is new). The cities are superbly rendered, though not in the literal sense; individual graphic elements in the game aren't particularly impressive, but taken as a whole the overall game is attractive, albeit rather system taxing. While not exact replicas, they do a terrific job at conveying the overall flavor of the cities. Residents, or people that have visited the cities, will be able to pick out all of the major landmarks, such as Coit Tower, the Transamerica Pyramid, and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and Trafalgar Square, the Royal Albert Hall and Big Ben in London (but what's up with London cops driving Mustangs?). Be warned: you may need to lower your graphic settings for San Francisco, as it runs noticeably slower than London.

The single-player race modes are considerably easier than they were in the first game, though you're still stuck with the slightly schizoid computer opponents (which seem to all have very fixed paths through each race) and kamikaze cops that are more hazardous to the denizens of the city than you could ever be (thankfully they're slightly less omnipotent than they were in the first game). You can still use Cruise Mode to do banzai runs around the cities, with little regard for property or human life. The Blitz, Checkpoint, and Circuit racing modes are all variations on a theme; race along different routes in the cities hitting markers. Some are fixed routes (with shortcuts) while others are free-for-alls through the cities. Multiplayer includes the entertaining "Cops and Robbers," a game where one (or more) players try to steal gold bars while others are ramming them with cop cars.

Unfortunately, a strange design flaw essentially kills the solo game. The game's new mode, the "Crash Course," is essentially a tutorial, teaching you different driving techniques that are useful elsewhere by placing you in the role of a Hollywood stunt driver in San Francisco and a cab driver in London. As with most arcade games, winning races or completing "Tests" in the Crash Course unlocks new stuff, new paint schemes (yawn) and cars (yay!). But you're allowed to access all the unlocked vehicles in other race modes and the game doesn't scale the competition. For example, completing the London Cab section of the Crash Course unlocks the Aston Martin DB7-arguably the game's best overall car, featuring terrific handling, acceleration, and top speed. Once it's available, all subsequent races (excepting the last couple of each type) are laughably easy, as your competition is often made up of slow vehicles like Minis, London Cabs, or even Volkswagen New Beetles. Why not break up the races into class-specific ones, limiting players to certain car-types per race?

Also problematic is the game's physics and damage modeling, both of which feel like carryovers from the first game. They both feel too "rules-based," as in "When entering turn at 30MPH, go into canned spin #2" or "if you hit X cars, start smoking." The cars feel as if they have pins stuck in their center, with little sense of weight transfer, and there is little of the slip-sliding that an urban driving game truly begs for (if you've ever played Driver, that's the target for exaggerated but plausibly realistic handling). Damage modeling is essentially nonexistent-cars start to look a little worse, smoke then crap out, with little performance degradation until the very end. If you've ever experienced the awe-inspiring carnage of Carmageddon 2, you can't help but be disappointed.

Because of the innate appeal of driving over, under, and through other vehicles and buildings, Midtown Madness 2 feels like the best game in the world-for a few days or hours at least. But once you've explored all of its features, the overall experience somehow ends up being less than the sum of its undeniably entertaining parts.