by:	June 01, 2004

It is a shame I didn’t play Midtown Madness 3 a year ago when it was first released. It might have seemed more exceptional then. However, only a few months later, Midnight Club 2 was released, bringing with it much more interesting street race gameplay. However, judging MM3 on its own merits, it is a decent arcade racer.

Like MC2, Midtown Madness’ single player mode focuses on checkpoint style racing across a detailed cityscape - in this case, Paris and Washington D.C. The main mode of play is Undercover, where you play a detective taking on various jobs like pizza delivery or limo driver in order to get closer to solving some mystery. This is just an artistic way to act like you aren’t just doing the same checkpoint racing. Between Undercover and the individual Checkpoint and Blitz modes there are numerous time or competition based checkpoint races to complete. The reward for completion of these goals are a bevy of new vehicles ranging from the Mini and Beetle to top-end sports cars. There are some more unusual vehicles such as busses that also come into play.

The multiplayer element of MM3 is what I had heard repeatedly hyped, leading me to try the game. Unfortunately, my experience playing this game on Live was dominated by asshole hosts who would boot me for no particular reason, though I was often doing quite well. This is the type of newbie-banning that can completely ruin the online environment for a game. This aside, the multiple game modes provide interesting play, aside from the worthless Cruise mode.

Checkpoint racing is much like the single player game, driving around through various race layouts trying to be the first to go through all of them. Tag is one of the better modes, where each player has a set amount of ‘it’ time before they are eliminated; the last one standing wins. In Hunter, one player starts as a cop and chases the others. With each player he catches, he turns them into a cop as well until there is only one ‘prey’ left. That person wins the game and becomes the first Hunter in the next game. Finally, there is Stayaway, which is a mobile, king of the hill game where players try to hold the ‘rabbit’ the longest without being tagged; something made more difficult because of a speed restriction on the person who is it. Overall, these modes have potential to be fun, but only if you get the right group to play with. Judging from my experience one-year after release, only idiots are still playing. The multiplayer also works for System Link and, restricted to Cruise and Checkpoint modes, split screen.