Madder Than Before! (Midtown Madness 2 (PC))

Member Name: R_Easton

Product:	Midtown Madness 2 (PC)
Date:	20/10/01 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great arcade action, Easy to play

Disadvantages: short, not many tracks

Midtown Madness is a great arcade racing game where you race, usually to checkpoints, as fast as you can. The game calls it self ‘no rules’ racing. This is because you can do anything to win, including ramming your opponents of the track, and taking shortcuts. It is based in a city (Chicago in the original and London and San Francisco in the sequel), and doesn’t have an especially designed track like in most racing games. Midtown Madness 2 adds a lot to the game, unlike some sequels that just have better graphics.

The first thing you’ll probably do when you start the game (apart from entering your name!) are the training levels. You can choose whether to train as a London cab driver or a stunt driver in San Francisco. You can eventually do the other as well but only one at a time of course. There is several different ‘missions’ for you to do, including jumping bridges, chasing other cars and racing round the city at very high speeds. Doing the ‘midterm’ tests will unlock new cars for the rest of the game, so there are two reasons for doing the training.

When you start the game you will have to choose your car, the city to drive in and the game mode:

-Cars-
There are twenty cars in the game including Minis, Cadillacs, Buses, Juggernauts and Army vehicles. All the cars have different attributes which are their weight (affects their ramming ability) top speed (this is obvious), durability (how long the car will last before it is totally recked) and horse power (this also affects speed and acceleration). All the vehicles have advantages and disadvantages like the Panoz GTR-1, which has a huge top speed and horsepower but almost no durability, or the Bus, which has huge durability and weight but a very low top speed.

-Cities-
There are two cities in the game; they are London and San Francisco. The cities are very detailed, with other cars, trucks and many other vehicles
travelling round the city. There are also people walking along the pavements, although very cleverly, they manage to avoid getting run over, no matter how fast you drive towards them. The two cities are very different; London has lots of small windy roads and several draw bridges over the river (great for jumping over) whilst San Francisco has lots of very straight wide roads and many huge hills (and the golden gate bridge!).

-Modes-
There are four race modes in the game. The first is ‘cruise’ mode; this is just a practise mode with no opponent drivers (but other cars are still on the road), and no checkpoints. This is good for just driving round the city and getting used to all the different areas. The second is ‘blitz’ mode. In this you have to race against the clock to get to all the checkpoints. There are no opponent cars but others cars are driving around on the roads.

In ‘Checkpoint’ mode you have to race around getting to all the checkpoints before your opponents. This is similar to blitz mode, except you have no time limit but do have to race other cars. In both modes, you can do the checkpoints in any order, although there is a recommended route. I think this is the hardest of the modes.

The last mode is ‘Circuit’. In this mode you race against opponent cars but there are no other cars on the road. You follow a set track round the city and the other areas are fenced off. Two or three laps of the track are usually done.

This game is a very fun arcade game although it does have quite a lot of detail. The cars are damaged every time you hit something (although the damage model is quite poor: Hitting a wall front on will damage all of the car equally.) and when you have total damage the race is over (except in circuit mode, where you have a five second penalty and then the car is fixed. It has a lot of improvements over the original, such as having two citie
s instead of one, and the training levels.

I recommend this game to any racing game fan but especially those who dislike harder simulation racing games, as the early levels are very easy and anyone should be able to progress through this game.

Summary: