Midtown Madness 2 If you want to play a very fun racing game, then
Midtown Madness 2 is for you. There are few sure things in life, but one of
them is that if Microsoft puts out a racing game with "Madness" in
the title, you might as well grab it as soon as it hits store shelves. Midtown
Madness 2 is no exception to this rule. It doesn't matter whether you're a
hard-core simulation fan or you simply crave speed, destruction, and mayhem in
your games - if you want to play a very fun racing game, then Midtown Madness 2
is for you.
But that's not to say that Midtown Madness 2 is ideal. In fact, it
seems as though it could have used a couple more weeks in testing. On several
occasions the game completely locked up on a fairly standard system (Celeron
450MHz, 256MB RAM, TNT2 video card with the latest drivers), and only through
uninstalling and reinstalling did the problem finally seem to go away. As in
some other racing games, the brakes don't truly function as real-life brakes
when both pedals are configured to use the y-axis: Slamming on the pedal
doesn't lock the wheels but merely decelerates your car more quickly. An attempt to correct this by configuring the
pedals to use two axes revealed a bug - the brakes worked in reverse, forcing
you to keep the pedal down for no brakes and releasing it to stop. Your only
true braking option is the hand brake, which tends to cause unpredictable
slides when all you really want to do is slow down in a hurry. Also, at the
beginning of one race, my car was positioned facing in the opposite direction
of the other cars, and stepping on the gas sent me hurtling backward along with
them even though I was in first gear. Fortunately, none of these problems were
persistent or detrimental to how enjoyable the game turns out to be.
You can actually work your way around most of these issues, and in
fact you might never experience a game crash yourself. But there's no getting
past the game's rather pathetic engine noises. When you see a '68 Mustang
Fastback tearing through downtown San Francisco, you want to hear a mighty
rumbling sound that'll make bystanders think the big earthquake's finally
happening. Instead, the cars in Midtown Madness 2 give off a little purr that
barely changes in tone even when you're redlining the tachometer. Even in an
arcade-style racing game such as this, it's good to be able to hear when you
should change gears, rather than constantly have to check the tachometer.
You can drive in 20 different rides that range from standards like
Mustangs, an El Dorado, and several types of Volkswagens (including the Dune
and the new Beetle RSi) to big rigs, double-decker buses, and even a
Humvee-wannabee called the "light tactical vehicle." But don't expect
to hop in that Dune, Aston Martin, or Panoz GTR-1 as soon as you load the game. Nearly
half the cars are locked when you first begin play. Fortunately, unlocking the
first few isn't too tough when you play on the amateur difficulty setting - for
instance, to get the Audi TT, you just have to finish in the top three of half
of the San Francisco checkpoint races. Still, it can be frustrating to have to
unlock all those hidden cars.
Although its minimum system requirements are fairly low, you'll
probably need a fast Pentium III and a cutting-edge 3D video card to play
Midtown Madness 2 in higher resolutions with all the graphical bells and
whistles turned on. But the action itself is so fast and brutal that you likely
won't mind one bit that you have to give up some visual extras in order to get
a smooth frame rate. The game might even make you consider making that hardware
upgrade you've been putting off - and any game that does that is always worth
checking out.
SCREEN SHOTS
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
Processor= 400MHz
RAM= 128MB
Graphics= 32MB
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