Reviews / previews
Traffic is like a river. Whether you're on I-10 in the LA
rush hour or cruising through the sole stoplight in
some tiny Appalachian burg, driving is all about
negotiating the river, catching its currents, skirting its
eddies. It's all about
hitting the signals at
the right time and
divining what other
cars are going to
do. It's a swirl of
anticipation and
intention.
Most driving games
miss this point,
opting instead for the dark fantasies of hood-mounted
rocket launchers and bloody pedestrians. But
Microsoft's Midtown Madness is the exception: a
bright traffic sim, in a semi-real place, with an
exhilarating, devil-may-care spirit.
Rather than separate courses or tracks, Midtown
Madness offers three styles of racing set in a
scaled-down model of downtown Chicago. It's a sort
of "Best of the Windy City" tour of landmarks and
architecture.
However, in this
version of Chicago,
the drivers are all
drunk and the cops
have the finesse of
Mel Gibson's
suicidal Riggs in
Lethal Weapon. The
non-racing cars
routinely smash into each other and jerk
around the road, and the cops recklessly hunt down the player--never mind
the computer drivers-at the expense of oncoming traffic.
But, that said, this is otherwise a real step up for Microsoft's Madness racing
series. While the previous games have been characterized by barren,
non-interactive environments--Motocross Madness might as well have been
set on the moon)--Midtown Madness features a detailed environment, alive
with all manner of cars and deft pedestrians who always manage to leap to
safety in the nick of time. The drawing distance gives a strong sense of a
vast, deep city and the texturing--with
highlighting that makes it looks like these
cars just drove off the lot--creates a solid
balance of speed and detail. This is one of
the most compelling racing environments
since SCi/Interplay's gratuitously gory (and
less carefree) Carmageddon 2.
There are two skill levels and ten different
cars that can ultimately be unlocked by
winning races. (The bus and the semi are
loads of fun for bulldozing your way through slow traffic). But the real variety
comes with the game's physics setting. Move the slider all the way to the left
to have a rollicking good time banging up cars and plunging off buildings. Or
move it all the way to the right to really raise the stakes. Realistic physics
makes for a wholly different game, in which collisions kill (although the
damage model is disappointingly simple).
The multiplayer game is sadly lacking the
best thing about Midtown Madness: traffic.
When you race online, Chicago is suddenly
eerily empty of its citizens.
But as a single player game, this is the sort
of mayhem that's long overdue. Going back
to that traffic-as-river analogy, we've had
gunboat games (I-76 and Carmageddon) and
powerboat racing (Need for Speed and
Grand Prix Legends).
But here at last is some genuine white-water rafting--unpredictable, exciting,
and guaranteed to soak you to the skin.-- Peter Olafson / GamePro
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