Though it might be graphically deficient, Midtown Madness 2 continues to offer great and engaging driving fun.
Midtown Madness 2 builds upon the mild success of the original Midtown Madness, which allowed for a variety of racing types around a small free-roam version of Chicago. Here in the successor, the basic formula has not been tampered with, but a few more modes have been added, whilst the overall style has been honed and streamlined. There are also two brand new cities, London and San Francisco. At heart, this is an arcade-style racing game, mixed in with the illusion of free-roaming, whilst a couple of aspects of Stunt Driver have been thrown in for good measure. From the get-go, there are a good selection of cars open to get along with (such as the Ford Mustang GT, the Cadillac Eldorado and the Volkswagen New Beetle) and the promise of unlocking special or novelty vehicles for completing races or accomplishing missions in the two career modes (including the Aston Martin DB7, the first generation Audi TT and the New Mini Cooper), bringing the total number of cars to 20.
There are several varying racing styles to choose from in each city. You can do ordinary Circuit races against AI opponents, Checkpoint races, where there is no predetermined route and you rush to the nearest checkpoint at random, and Blitz, which is against the clock. There is also the freeform Cruise mode, where you can explore the city at your leisure, taking care to avoid the police. All three race types are done well, and the enemy AI is sufficiently challenging, though if they find themselves off course they can get hopelessly lost and drive around in circles, literally. On top of this, there are also two Crash Course career modes, where you take on the part of a London Cab driver or a San Francisco stunt driver. These are a good diversion (if incredibly unrealistic, when on Earth was cornering through red lights, at over 40mph on the Cab driver exam?) and require similar skills to be mastered in each. Completing races and the challenges will unlock several of the better or stranger cars and paintjobs, which are needed to complete the longer races against tougher competitors in faster transportation later on.
Graphically, this is not a game to write a letter home about, or even a postcard for that matter. The cities have a variety of well-known landmarks peppered about the place (including all of the usual suspects and also some you might not know about, save for the London Eye, since it wasn't built when the game was created), but none of them appear very detailed, or in anyway interesting apart from merely their superficial value of going; "oh look, it's Buckingham Palace/The Golden Gate Bridge". The polygon count on most of the buildings is pretty low, with generic images reused quite often. The bodywork textures of the cars fare slightly better, and can at times look reasonable sharp. However, the damage textures (which, for a game with solely licensed cars in it seems strange in itself), are blocky and extremely unrealistic, and really just look like mud and scratches caked onto the bodywork. On the plus side however, for the road crazy enthusiast, the layout of most of the streets is surprisingly accurate, though a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is required to see the similarities between the game and their real-life counterparts (for example, The Mall is woefully too short and much too wide, as is Market Street).
Though the game has an impressive selection of cars, it is easy to tell the difference between the good and the bad ones. Each vehicle has controls which are enormously unrealistic or strange, so that a Double-Decker bus can easily swing round sharp corners, but the Taxicab has difficulty turning at all. Further, the speeds are also to be taken with a pinch of salt. When the extremely tacky speedometer says that you are travelling at 70mph, it feels more like 30. You can also reverse backwards at speeds upwards of 50mph. However, it is important to note that this game was not designed to be realistic. One of the most fun aspects of the game is how destructible the street furniture is. Absolutely everything, from lampposts to telephone boxes, newspaper vendors and hotdog stands can be crashed into and thrown over the place, causing havoc for the traffic. The other road traffic present in several modes can be slammed into, causing some pretty cool and destructive crashes. It is a bit weird though that some heavy vehicles such as large trucks can be thrown sky high when bumped into.
The police in Midtown Madness 2 are both a fun distraction, and an annoying one. No matter how fast you are going, no matter what you are doing (even if you are obeying the traffic laws, which is a novel way to cruise around), if you encounter a police vehicle parked by the side of the road, it will immediately turn on its siren and pursue you, attempting to cause you to crash by forcing you off the road or blocking your way. The only way to shake off the cops is either to destroy them, or to get out of their pursuit radius. On the one hand, it is fun to be tearing along a street with three cop cars on your tail, each one ferociously trying to take you down. On the other, the police are totally above the law, often causing some of the most horrendous traffic accidents as they stop at nothing in keeping up with you. Until 2006, the MSN Gaming Zone (now simply MSN Games) had hosted online lobbies for multiplayer Midtown Madness games. Sadly, this has ended, though it is possible to find certain sites that support the game, though it is extremely unlikely you will find anyone to play with. It is also possible though to do DirectPlay with two people who own copies of the game, if each knows the IP address of the other. There is however still a burgeoning modification community, who have added vehicles, upgrades and alternative cities which can increase the appeal of the game.
Midtown Madness 2 will always hold a special place in my heart. It is one of the only games I felt utterly compelled to finish entirely, and then play through all over again and again. Times may have changed, but Midtown Madness is genuinely still one of the best arcade racing games there has ever been. Though it is let down by some weaknesses, its addictive formula and simplistic approach are too good to resist.