Midtown Madness 2 Preview

Microsoft's original Midtown Madness took racers off the beaten track and onto the streets of Chicago. With a selection of vehicles ranging from the powerful Ford Mustang to the municipal behemoth of the city bus, players tore up the windy city to the sweet sounds of blaring horns, shouting citizens, and not-so-infrequent collisions. Its sequel Midtown Madness 2 delivers double the driving turf, subjecting two cities, San Francisco and London, to the thrashing of urban racing.

Decades ago, the Steve McQueen movie Bullitt gave moviegoers the spectacle of a high-speed chase through the hilly streets of San Francisco. The speeding cars got some serious air and seemed to spend more time over San Francisco than in it, in the process creating a metal-wrecking, glass-shattering fantasy for fans across the world. While Bullitt is ancient history, it left auto enthusiasts with a single driving ambition: to jump the hills of San Francisco. Never mind that landings could get messy, drivers wanted to fly. Midtown Madness 2 aspires to scratch the Bullitt itch without hiking insurance rates. San Francisco is all there, with landmarks like Chinatown and the impossibly steep and twisted Lombard Street. The hills are there, the speed is there, and the physics engine propels simulated vehicles in the same Hollywood fashion as Bullitt and The Rock.

Likewise, London offers old-world charm, and lots of it. As befits a city of its age and historical significance, the map of London's city streets looks like the web of a deranged spider operating on its 12th cup of coffee. London speeds by in a breathtaking blur of red phone booths and funky cars. The weave of streets means that you can reach any one destination by many routes and that racing cars can crisscross each other, which can result in potentially devastating collisions.

Each city is rendered in great detail, with accurate topography re-creating San Francisco's back-breaking hills and London's winding streets under various weather and lighting conditions. Drivers aren't constrained by a track, and they can take their vehicles just about anywhere the asphalt lies. And the streets aren't the limit of exploration: Back alleys, parking structures, jump ramps, expressways, and even London's underground train tunnels open up for the alert driver.

Midtown Madness 2 features nine new vehicles in addition to the cars from the original. The selection ranges from the sporty Aston-Martin Vantage DB-7 (in an assortment of colors) and the Audi TT to England's famous red double-decker bus and the slightly less famous but enticing light attack vehicle. Not all vehicles are immediately available, but they must be unlocked as rewards for completing certain scenarios. Each vehicle is rated for acceleration, horsepower, mass, and durability, and these statistics visibly affect performance. For example, a light Panoz Roadster is great for zipping along, but it is just another insect to the windshield of an oncoming city bus. Vehicles take a beating on the road, and the car bodies show the debilitating effects of tearing up parking meters, smashing traffic lights, and careening into and through traffic. Fragments fly as the mistreated machines shed bumpers and fenders.

Gameplay is offered in a variety of modes: cruise, blitz, checkpoint, and circuit - all modes from the original and all available in single and multiplayer modes. There is also a new mode called crash course, which is a themed single-player option in which the driver may train in San Francisco as a Hollywood stunt driver or in London as a new cabbie in an old and complex town. Crash course is set up as a series of lessons on particular driving techniques and challenges, with appropriate "midterms." The lessons teach the basics of jumping off docks onto ferryboats, using the hand brake and powersliding around turns, and handling course challenges with the pedal to the metal. Perhaps more importantly, success in the crash courses unlocks the more exotic vehicles and promises to enhance replayability as players put the new car through its paces. Cruise mode lets players explore the city map and meander about at whim. Blitz mode is a race against time to run a city course. Checkpoint is a race to pass all the checkpoints before your opponents by whatever route or means necessary. Circuit creates an urban track where players race more-traditional laps on very nontraditional courses.

Overall, this beta shows that Midtown Madness 2 is well on its way, though there are a few things still to insert, like the colorful commentary on a player's driving performance. A few annoying but obvious bugs still persist, like phantom roads that disappear under your car, but it is reasonable to expect that they will be cleaned out in the release.

Minimum system requirements for the final release will be PII 233 with an 8MB video card and hardware acceleration or a PII 266 running in software mode, with a minimum of 32MB RAM - 64MB is recommended.

As is usually the case, minimum means minimum: While the detail, lighting, and density of objects may be manipulated in some scenarios, and while the game resolution is adjustable, Midtown Madness 2 will place some serious demands on your hardware. The screen can be literally filled with interacting objects, racing cars, hapless pedestrians, heavy traffic, police, and weather and lighting effects. Add landscape, debris, smoke, and burnt rubber, and things can slow down in a hurry. If you don't have a good video card yet, now's the time to get one.

Midtown Madness 2 is scheduled for release this fall at an estimated retail price of US$39.99.