Midtown Madness 2

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For the racing series, see Midtown Madness (series)
Midtown Madness 2

Developer(s) Angel Studios (Now Rockstar San Diego)
Publisher(s) Microsoft Game Studios
Designer(s) Jay Panek
Platform(s) Windows
Release date September 22, 2000
Genre(s) Racing
Mode(s) Single player, Multiplayer
Rating(s) ELSPA: 3+
ESRB E
Media CD-ROM
System requirements Pentium II 266mhz, 32mb RAM, 350mb hard drive space, 8mb graphics card, DirectX 7.x or higher

Midtown Madness 2 is a free roam racing/arcade sequel to Midtown Madness, part of the Midtown Madness series, developed by Angel Studios (now Rockstar San Diego) and published by Microsoft Game Studios, which features a range of vehicles which can be driven around London and San Francisco.

Contents

[edit] Race modes

The game features Blitz, Checkpoint, Circuit and Cruise modes, which are all derived from the original Midtown Madness game. Winning Blitz, Checkpoint and Circuit races allows you to unlock new vehicles and paint jobs. The Cruise mode lets you roam freely around the two available cities.

A Crash Course can be completed in each of the cities. The Cab Driving School in London follows an extremist view of a London Cab driver, where a player must complete objectives in a London cab. The Stunt Driver course in San Francisco allows the player to gain experience in stunt driving for a Hollywood movie, using the Ford Mustang Fastback.

Players can change variables which affect the vehicle's performance and visual appearance of the game before starting a race, such as the weather and time of day. Additionally, police vehicle frequency can be modified, as with the amount of traffic and pedestrians.

Every race or cruise would begin with someone commenting about the weather, the conditions of the race, or something else. These commenters would also be heard at the end of a race (not a cruise) saying something that depends on your position upon finishing. The commenters would be different for each race, and they are different for each city (i.e. someone commenting in San Francisco would not be heard in London, or vice versa). These include for San Francisco: a newscaster, a hippie, a stunt driving instructor, a short-tempered film director; for London: a Scottish man, an English woman, and (presumably through her elegant-sounding voice) Queen Elizabeth II, although the woman mispronounces English words using the American slang terms instead.

[edit] Available cities

London and San Francisco are available as free roaming, yet dimensionally limited, city locales in the game. They represent the innermost areas of the real life cities, although are less detailed than their real life counterparts.[1]

[edit] London

Drivers in London can explore a variety of landmarks and enter a reduced version of the London Underground with an interconnected tube line. Also you can drive through the Tower of London and jump over the open Tower Bridge.

[edit] San Francisco

Drivers in San Francisco can also explore landmarks, such as crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. However the route to Marin County does not exist in the game, as the road after the bridge terminates in a loop. Alcatraz is also completely visible, although cannot be reached without further modification. It is also possible, though difficult, to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.

[edit] Available vehicles

There are a wide variety of famous vehicles to choose from, such as the Aston Martin DB7 Vantage, New Mini Cooper and the Audi TT. Each vehicle includes a number of unique paint jobs. Some vehicles also contain unlockable special paint jobs, accessed by completing certain races or Crash Course challenges.

[edit] Initially unlocked vehicles

[edit] Initially locked vehicles

The following vehicles are available upon completion of certain races or Crash Course challenges.

Additional vehicles, which existed in the Midtown Madness 2 beta, were extracted and placed in the final version; a Moon Buggy and the Cadillac Eldorado Seville 1959, the latter of which was officially integrated with Midtown Madness 3.

Many fans of the game have also created their own vehicles, based on other popular real life or toy vehicles, ranging from the Shelby Mustang GT500 to Lego carts to the De Lorean DMC-12, in both the original and Back to the Future designs.

[edit] Multiplayer options

Support for multiplayer gaming via IP address, serial cable, and analogue modem is built-in. Additionally, the game's multiplayer menu includes a link to the MSN Gaming Zone, which offered Midtown Madness 2 lobbies until 19 June 2006. Similar online gaming sites still support multiplayer gaming, such as GameSpy, IGZones.com, and also through instant messenger clients, such as XFire. Multiplayer clients use Midtown Madness 2's built-in DirectPlay support to launch and manage multiplayer sessions.

[edit] Modifications

Many areas of the game are open to modification. These additions can easily be added to the game, as they are compressed in the zip file format (the file extension is renamed to .ar, in order to be compatible with the game).

  • New vehicles can be added to the game. These are generally formed by fans producing models from scratch, with real world textures applied. The game's vehicle AI (such as traffic and police vehicles) can also be redesigned.
  • New locales (cities) can also be added to the game. Similarly, there have been modifications of the existing cities, which add components built from scratch and those already available from the game's source files.
  • Physics modifications have also been produced, which vary the world and entity properties of the game, such as modifications which make city objects more durable or realistic. A "drive on water" patch allows the player to easily drive to previously inaccessible areas of the game, such as Alcatraz and the Marin County land mass beyond its terminating loop.

[edit] Criticisms

Some fans have criticised Midtown Madness 2 on a number of issues. Some of which, are listed below.

  • Races are easier to complete than in the prequel, Midtown Madness.
  • The lack of physical and graphical realism, as suggested by the game's genre.
  • The seeming ineptitude of the AI vehicles.
  • The lack of interest for public safety from police vehicles.
  • Contains a plethora of minor cosmetic bugs.
  • Street vehicles (mostly trucks) are sometimes thrown into the air when crashed into.

Some of these criticisms, such as the ridiculous physics, are defended by others, claiming that the series attempts to create the most extreme conditions possible, not the most realistic.

[edit] Comparisons

  • Midnight Club: Street Racing was developed by Angel Studios in approximately the same period as Midtown Madness 2. As a result, both games share a similar engine, and comparably identical elements. Due to this level of compatibility, Midnight Club's New York city locale has been successfully extracted and imported into Midtown Madness 2 via modification.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Midtown Madness 2 Central | Midtown Madness 2 | Features | London Through The Eyes Of An Englishman