Madness And Mayhem! (Midtown Madness 2 (PC))

Member Name: aljones

Product:	Midtown Madness 2 (PC)
Date:	24/07/01 (582 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots of choice, Varied

Disadvantages: Only two towns, but they are huge so..., Graphics can suffer on lower spec machines

I don't know why I bought it, but I'm glad that I did. Midtown Madness 2 for the PC is probably one of the best PC games I've ever bought. When I say I don't know why I bought, I actually do. It was in a double pack along with Motocross Madness 2, all for just £29.99, cheaper than one of them individually. I've been playing Midnight Club on the PS2 for the last few weeks, and Smugglers Run on PS2 just before that, and have began to love these games where there are no set tracks to follow as you would find in most racing games.

This is yet another Microsoft game. Most people would say that Microsoft couldn't make a good game if they tried. Well, I would have to say that they are very, very wrong. I've played several MS games, and have loved each one. The bonus with Microsoft games is that they try as hard as possible to make a game realistic. And this is no exception.

You get two cities to drive around (or should that be terrorise?), San Francisco and London. You don't get the full cities, but instead a good portion of each. Each one has landmarks, which are semi-accurately recreated. Both the towns are inhabited, but you decide how much. You get to choose how many pedestrians, cars and cops are in the city. Turn off the cops to allow you to what you want, increase the number of pedestrians to give yourself more target practice, and turn off the other cars so that you aren't faced with huge queues at the traffic lights. Traffic lights? Well, they are there, and the AI cars do try and stick to them, but you don't have to.

There are plenty of track-side objects, from parking meters to dust bins to post boxes. And if you hit them, there contents fly everywhere, be it coins, rubbish or letters. To start with, just use the Cruise mode so that you drive around the cities in the cars of your choice, to get used to them and the cities themselves. There are lots of roads, and alleyways which can prove to be us
eful shortcuts. In London, you can also drive down into the Tube, and drive around the tracks down there. They provide useful fast routes to other ends of the city.

The game has several modes. They basically consists of Driving School challenges, Circuit races, and Checkpoint races. So, what is each like? The driving school has two classes which you can take, and completing the midterms and final exams earn you new cars or paint jobs. You either train as a stunt driver in a classis Ford Mustang in San Francisco, or as a London Cabbie in, you've guessed it, a good old London Cab. Some of the lessons/tests can be a bit hard, and can take several attempts to master and complete. There is a small cheat that I found out about, which stops the timer for anybody who's interested! Just hit F2 during the game, which pauses it. Then press Q to bring up the map, and Q again to get rid of the map and un-pause the game. The game will continue, but with the timer stopped! OK, back to the review.

The circuit races can be quite fun, and aren't to hard to win in even the basic cars that you get. The circuits follow a few of the streets around the cities, and are marked by big red and white foam pads blocking off streets, to form the circuit. These can easily be knocked over, which can be a problem as if too many are knocked out of the way, you can end up missing a turn (and I have done, several times!).

The checkpoint/blitz races again involve racing round the city streets, either against the clock or AI cars. But this time, you just have to drive to the next check point along the route of your choice. So you can use all the shortcuts you've learned, and avoid all the tricky turns.

The graphics of the game are nothing special. They are quite good, but after playing similar games on the PS2 the graphics on PC games will never seem very good ever again. There are plenty of details, both on the cars and the environment, and you do get
reflections and the like. The graphics do run quite smoothly, though sometimes I seem to experience some slow down, where the game goes into what appears to a slow motion replay, but while it's actually happening! Also, now and again I experienced a problem with the graphics where they basically disappear, and turn a sort of greenish-blue. To get rid of this, a reboot of the computer is necessary. Apart from that, I have had no problems graphics wise, and compared to most other PC games, the graphics on MM2 are pretty good.

The sounds are great, though you'll need good speakers, as with any game, to get the best out of them. Each vehicle has a different engine sound, and also different sounds for skidding and crashes. There are also environment sounds, such as background noise such as seagulls, boats, car alarms and sirens. Also, pedestrians give off rather nice shrieks as you drive towards them. So far, I haven't managed to hit a pedestrian, as they dive out of the way too quickly, or stand so close to the wall of a building that somehow you just can't get to them.

Installation of the game is pretty smooth, and gives you two options if you need to cuts down on disk space. I went for the small installation, at something like 150Mb, and all you lose is some different voices for the commentary.

This game is perfect, but it isn't far off. A few more tweaks to get rid of the inevitable Microsoft bugs and this game would be excellent. As it is, it's a very playable game that will last for ages. And what's even better, there are plenty of web sites, such as Midtown Madness 2 Central, that have archives of loads of extra cars that you can install into the game, further extending its life span.

Summary: