Midtown Madness 2 Review

There are few games that actually managed to bring something new to the racing genre in the last couple of years. Now, if we disregard the games that included shooting and the NFS serial, the only thing left is the MS Midtown Madness, which introduced driving through simulated city traffic.

That was the first game that gave you the (virtual) taste of rushing through dense city traffic, pass through red lights, driving on the opposite side of the highway, all the things we only had a chance to see in the movies. Even though the game wasn't too playable altogether a lot of players got hooked on it, so it seems strange that only one clone appeared since - The Driver. Driver had a nice campaign mode, a less demanding engine, and was somewhat more playable... Still, a year passed since it appeared, a period long enough to make the fans of both games eagerly anticipate the sequel of the Microsoft's game. And now that it finally reached us... the enthusiasm wore off. The thing that disappointed me most is that a lot of previously announced features got simply left out.

Once you get the game going, you'll first have to read: "Driving in the manner depicted herein in real life is not recommended! Drive responsibly!" after which you get to choose amateur or pro level of difficulty, the difference between the two being traffic density, time limits, and stats required for "unlocking" new tracks.

Midtown Madness 2 takes place in London & San Francisco instead of Chicago, and both cities are available from the very start, so you don't have to bother driving only through one of them until you "unlock" the other. The programmers had to develop a new engine in order to create the new cities, especially San Francisco. Its greatest features include the support for multi-planar terrains and better texturing (I wonder if the same goes for the sky). To be quite frank, I never even figured out that MM1 took place on a single plain, because the map was so great and realistic. The graphics here look much better than they did in the prequel, but the engine is much more demanding too. The cities are crammed with details, and anyone who visited the two will probably enjoy looking around for landmarks like Golden Gate, Big Ben, Royal Albert Hall, Coit Tower...

Still, something's a miss. First, there is NO (long since announced) full damage model. Instead of car parts falling off (like in Carmageddon 2 and TDR 2000 where the damage model really is brilliant) the only things that will show you the level of "fux-up-ness" of your car will be the textures, sometimes followed by some smoke or some slightly weird wheel rotation. I must admit that the car textures deserve all praise, so you won't miss the full damage model too much, unless you had been eagerly expecting it (like me, for instance). Dynamic lighting presents another huge disappointment. Even if you disregard the fact that traffic lights and streetlights cast no light on surrounding objects (with some rare exceptions, like the lights on Golden Gate), you'll soon get frustrated by the lack of dynamic lighting from your headlights. It might not bother you too much at first, but after several night-rides, you'll see how inconvenient that can be.

There are a lot of interactive objects, and you can break almost anything you hit. Only the buildings, fountains, and fences in front of ocean/Thames remain crash resistant. The trouble is that none of the crashes seem realistic at all. Hitting a tree, pillar, or a traffic light won't affect your speed at all! The shock you receive from a crash is basically same regardless of the vehicle you're driving. Crashes with other cars are equally unrealistic; they're like hitting large cardboard boxes. London is full of narrow streets with a lot of parked cars, yet those cars present no obstacle because you can just rush through them. The effect is great, and I agree that those scenes shouldn't be over realistic (read: over-frustrating); still, some verisimilitude would be in order. I mean, this way, you can just take a London Cab or the even smaller Beetle and run around streets smashing and over-turning buses and trucks, or, better still rush at them from up front, and then push them backwards. Only the cop cars seem to be immune to this... The crashes in the prequel looked much better. This way the game is more of an arcade than a simulation.

Controlling the cars is also much different. Many flaws from the first part have been removed. Most players complained that maneuvering had been too difficult. The vehicles became a lot more controllable and capable of action tricks. The power slides are much better and easier to perform, but some cars still act funny even at lower speed. For instance, Ford Mustang is almost impossible to control in taking a turn, because the rear end keeps going its own way. Big vehicles don't behave any better - even trucks and busses tend to turn over 180° when you pull the hand-break, regardless of the fact they're cruising at 20-30MPH. And, the vehicles have a strange tendency to climb walls... To cut the long story short... The game is simply too unrealistic. The Driver seems to hold the best balance between the two parts of Midtown Madness series