midknight2k3's Full Review: Midtown Madness 3 for Xbox
MY STORY
Midtown Madness for PC was the first game I ever played that allowed you to simply drive around a given place and have no time limits, no opponents and no objective. The point (in Cruise mode) was that you have a great time driving around the realistic city and have fun testing your car’s limits or just crashing into things such as lampposts, garbage cans, and trees. You could race against the clock or opponents, but the Cruise mode really shine in my opinion. Who needs racing? Play by yourself! However you want, play the game how you want to! It did have a few things missing, though, including a few more cars and marginally better graphics. Microsoft saw that Midtown Madness was a hit, and came up with Midtown Madness 2 for PC, which was basically the same with more cars and new races – and it had the better graphics that some wanted. Midtown Madness 2 was a big hit as well, and so the Microsoft workers put their head together and ported the all-new MIDTOWN MADNESS 3 to Xbox (nothing else, of course)!
THE BEGINNING
Upon inserting the ALL NEW MIDTOWN MADNESS 3 game disc into your Xbox, you have many options to choose from:
“Work Undercover” lets you go to Washington DC or Paris and work your way up through your career (you begin as a delivery person and end up as a police officer, basically). There are many challenges here, and it’s certainly a twist to the Midtown Madness series.
“Single Race” lets you pick a race of your choice after choosing the city; BLITZ lets you race against the clock, CHECKPOINT lets you race against opponents, CRUISE lets you drive around all on your own with no strings attached.
Then there’s your regular stuff like Options and Multiplayer. And also, this game is Xbox Live enabled, so you can play with people across the world (broadband access and subscription required).
AS YOU GO ALONG…
.. you begin to unlock new cars and paint jobs for your vehicles; vehicles are unlocked by winning races and paint jobs can be found hidden throughout the cities. There are 30 cars in all, and some are big, some are slow, some are super fast, some are ugly, none are the same. The game does do some odd things to make you think differently – one mission I tried required about an hour to complete, which was odd since the others took about 5 minutes to complete. The game holds interesting all the way until all races are completed (then you get the SUPER ULTRA EXTRA TOP SECRET FASTEST CAR EVER – I think it’s the “Kunishnukakubana CC” or something like that).
AND YOU FINALLY BEAT THEM ALL!
I haven’t gotten to this stage yet, and Microsoft left out all cheat codes to make you work for that car. In a way it sucks, to not be able to cheat by having your car go ultra fast or for you to slow down all the other cars, etc. but in another way it’s good to know that everybody must work their way through it and get to the end their own way, not simply by some cheat or trick. And when you get to the end, it feels a WHOLE LOT BETTER. But cheatcodes or not, this game can be tough. And when it gets tough, you have no other option but to work it out and try again… and again, and again..
CARS
In this game there are a total of (I believe) 32 cars, and you only start off with about 7, so you’re immediately encouraged to give up the CRUISE mode and begin your career or get down to some serious beat-the-clock-or-the-opponents racing. All 18 cars I have so far are very nice looking, and are very close replicas of their real-life model. The physics are a bit different (as I’d guess) but hey, no game is perfect. The cars are all fun to drive and have their own unique abilities and speeds. They can also get bashed up; the windows can crack, the hood and trunk can fall off, the doors can get dented, all that sort of stuff. It makes for a very good game.
GRAPHICS
The graphics are near “ultra realistic”. They aren’t the absolute best I’ve ever seen, but they’re way up there (I’d say 9.75 stars out of 10). You do have to take into account the size of the cities, and realize they can’t make every little lamppost just perfect, but it’s very good, and much better than I expected from the screenshots I saw. Sparks fly as you smash into metal poles, water flies if you land in the water. All the cars look realistic (and so do the lampposts!) and overall the graphics are great – that gets 5 stars from me any day.
SOUND
The car engine sounds are average, and sound a bit “generic”. But the rest of the game is, well, excellent! When you crash into a lamppost, you can hear the glass lamp at the top shatter. If you crash into a building at relatively high speed the glass windows will shatter, and you will hear some nice screams from the crowd (that have flattened themselves to the wall so as not to get run into). Flying off the street into the water will cause a traditional “Ker-SplASH!”. The sound overall is very good.
OPTIONS
There’s also the traditional options menu, where you can choose the controller configuration, sound settings, you can set up your soundtrack with all your favorite songs on the Xbox Hard Drive, you can do many other things, and you can view a “Bonus Movie” about… “The guy who jumps out of the way when the car comes rushing at him”. This can also be found online somewhere.
CONCLUSION
This is definitely one of the better games for the Xbox, I resolve to beat it soon! It’s got great replay value since it has the Cruise mode, and is just fun to play overall. There’s so many options, you’ll rarely get bored.
Prepare for wide-open racing in two incredibly realistic cities -- more than 30 vehicles and 14 different racing careers to choose from Speed your way...More at Amazon Marketplace
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