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MIDTOWN MADNESS 3 (XBOX)
Gas, brake, honk!
By WILL BARKER
 So
there I am, driving a friend's Nissan 350Z (okay, so I 'borrowed'
it...). We're talking about a carbon-fibre drive shaft, six closely spaced
gear ratios and a 3.5-litre V6 engine with molybdenum coated cylinder
walls for minimal friction.
Slowly I wind out first gear
-- still getting used to the electronic throttle control -- and slot it
quickly from second, to third, then fourth, popping the clutch in and
out with joyful abandon.
Wow - what a great time I'm…
Aarrrrgh!! Where the f**k did he come from??? Gas, brake, honk! Gas, brake,
honk!! Honk, honk, PUNCH!! Punch, punch…
You get the idea.
And that's my midtown madness
- not fiction, not an episode of the Simpson's, but a very real experience.
Scary, ain't it?
Now that my spooky flashback
has receded back into the nether regions of my troubled mind, let's take
a look at what numero three in the mad-cap Midtown franchise is offering
- hopefully a little something from the above episode, hmm?
Midtown Madness 3 (or MM3 for
acronym aficionados) is the best Midtown game available thus far. Sure,
it makes sense for sequels to be improvements on their progeny, but this
ain't always the case, and I always thought that the original and its
successor were bloody good games.
So, with this in mind, what
does MM3 offer the seasoned virtual insurance premium hike-meisters? Plucking
a random aspect from a hat that once used to be coconut: Beautiful graphics.
The original game was very
spiffy back in its heyday, and its sequel was pretty good; that being
MM2, which was set in London and San Francisco.
 But
these were both PC games and rather than having to put together code that's
gotta work on a million different systems, with different types of RAM,
videocards, motherboards, CPUs and sound cards, the boffins at Digital
Illusions have only had to optimise code for a Celeron 750Mhz processor
linked to an Nvidia graphics board.
The result? Clipping that defies,
errr, really hardcore super genius programming techniques, and um, stuff
like that. In all seriousness, the viewing range is absolutely amazing,
meaning you'll be able to see stuff that's miles away in the distance
- assuming your viewing point is advantageous.
Cruising along the beautifully
bump-mapped cobblestone streets of Paris during sunrise is an experience
unto itself, with brilliant reflective effects on the thousands of small
windows of the structures of yore in the historical French capital.
The effect is immeasurably
pleasing, though it must be said that while playing, looking at the pretty
scenery is usually the last thing on your mind.
The third game in the MM series
is based in two cities: Paris, France and Washington D.C, America. This
would have been a purely economic decision, seeing as most videogame sales
occur in Europe and America. Still, I'm sincerely hoping that somewhere
down the track - perhaps MM5 - there will be a Baghdad or Mazar-e-sharif
download.
Moving along, and it must be
said that the vehicle models complete a very pretty overall picture too,
with high-poly counts, great texturing and one seriously drool-worthy
damage model.
You can really bend these puppies
out of shape, and even if you don't have nihilistic tendencies, even the
odd T-bone with another vehicle or a head-on with a shop front results
in satisfyingly realistic and geographically correct damage. Is
it just me, or is smashing up cars heaps of fun? [It's you, loser boy
- Ed]
Particle effects also show
promise, with shattering glass, nicely opaque smoke, lots of sparks and
even grass clippings all peppering the 3D make-believe world that hides
inside your Xbox.
 The levels themselves
are massive, absolutely huge, I tells ya! And they're not only large,
filled with cool areas to explore, malls to drive through and ramps to
find (for death-defying aerials), but are faithful recreations of their
respective real-world cities.
Granted, I've only even been
to Paris, but they seem to have got it pretty much bang on the money.
And while the game is visually
arresting, the sound is not.
It does get bonus brownie points
for the ability to import your own ripped music tracks into the game (who
else loves Irish folk songs sung in Hebrew?), but the way it always plays
the first track of the album on each new track/mission is somewhat sucky.
Moreover, the important sound
effects (engine sampling) fail to deliver the realistic impact that I,
as a cultured gamer and lover of motor vehicles, yearn. I don't know about
you guys, but a 2003-model SRT-10 Dodge Viper, what with its 8.3-litre
V10 engine, should sound like a great big bloody truck revving it's tits
off.
Sadly, this isn't the case,
and instead you get varying buzzy sound effects that really broke my already
twisted heart.
The smashing and crashing sound
effects are good though, with plenty of bending/snapping/distorting of
plastic/metal/carbon-fibre-kevlar composite material type effects. Wheel
screeches also sound particularly sweet, and some of the in-game speech
is quite a larf too.
Gameplay wise, and MM3 is rather
cool. I suppose the graphics help out, but the game is setup to be much
more endearing than its precursors, albeit in a rather schlocky, and wholly
corny way.
While there are a number of
game modes available, including Single Race (with checkpoint and blitz
races, plus the cruise mode) and Multiplayer (split screen, system link
and Xbox Live), the meat of the single player game lies in the Work Undercover
mode, though sadly there's no stake-outs where you get pop a cap in a
cop, coz he wasn't giving you props in Oaktown. [You're fired - Ed]
 Working Undercover
is basically a bunch of missions strung together, with both Washington
D.C and Paris offering a good variety of jobs.
Each city has seven different
jobs, and each "job" has on average four missions to play through,
which makes for a grand total of about 54 missions, which is a pretty
sweet deal on top of the other game modes.
You'll have to win races, smash
evildoers off the road and take customers for a ride in a rather intriguing
"Crazy Takushi" style cab affair.
There's heaps of variety, and
there aren't too many missions that bite - the only frustrating aspects
are losing by a whisker time and again. I blame the control pad…
By completing the Undercover
mode and even by winning general races, you'll unlock new vehicles, and
by cruising about through the two cities you can also find 'wacky' and
'zany' paintjobs for the cars.
Unfortunately at the time of
writing we didn't have access to Xbox Live due to yet another frenzied
Bunyip attack on the east coast of Australia, though after a few bouts
of System Link it's safe to say that it extends the shelf-life considerably.
When linked (or online) there
are four more game modes on top of the standard cruise and checkpoint.
They are:
- Capture
the Gold
- Tag
- Hunter
- Stayaway
Of these the pick of the bunch
would be Caputre the Gold, where basically you've gotta find the gold,
then deliver it to your drop-zone, like that movie of the same name where
Wesley Snipes talks a lot of crap and says "Always bet on black,
sucka!" Oh wait, that was Passenger 69...
 Anyway, the game
becomes more attractive when someone picks up the gold, as the other players
can extricate the bounty by slamming into them with a bit of gusto.
So, at the end of the day there'll
be the gold courier trying desperately to get up some speed, while being
tailed by a swarm of apocalyptic drivers out for blood. Cool or what?
The physics, while skewed slightly
in favour of ye olde arcade cabinet, are tops, though it must be said
that some sort of vile gravity modulator kicks in when you get air off
a ramp or some such.
Sure, you'll always land right-side
up, but where's the fun in that? I want backflips, McTwists, stiffy nose
bones and rail slides dammit!
But, in the end, I had plenty
of fun playing Midtown Madness 3 - just check that score. The gameplay
is very addictive, and even when I couldn't pass a mission or beat a race,
just driving around and seeing how the physics engine dealt with a head-on
smash with a bus (at 274km/h, no less), was heaps of fun.
The game will eventually end,
but the nature of the two cities (and their huge size) and the attention
to detail and the damage model and the range of cars and the tasty visuals
will keep you coming back for quite some time.
Best of all, it's dead easy
to pick up, meaning that it's a title that even non-gamers can play, even
enjoy.
ORIGINALITY 65%
SOUND/GRAPHICS 85%
PLAYABILITY 80%
ENJOYMENT 95%
OVERALL 85%
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