As a result, you can drive like a maniac and cause any number of wrecks without any real consequences, apart from slowing down. Additionally, damage modeling of any sort is conspicuously absent.
It's certainly nice to have several cars to choose from, but it doesn't make that much of a difference in the game's ability to hold your attention. All the levels take place on essentially the same large map, and the gameplay simply doesn't change much, no matter what your objective is. There are 16 levels, but the only levels in which you'll be remotely challenged involve a few of the ambulance missions, which you may need to try two or three times. Midtown Madness 3's major problem, and it's a fairly serious one, is that the game is entirely too short and easy, and it lacks both depth and replay value. This game's fun, but only for a little while. There are some good driving and crash effects, as well as a few looped menu tunes, but overall, the sound's not likely to drop your jaw. They also run smoothly and at a fast clip, which is the most important graphical characteristic for this type of game. The game's graphics aren't spectacular on the Nokia 6600, but they are clean and very functional, and they offer some nice touches, like flying trash bins and the like. Your heads-up display is attractively laid out and presents a lot of useful information, such as your timer, your speed, a large map in the lower right-hand corner, and how many checkpoints you have remaining. There are some occasional troubles with getting hung up on walls, especially when you're trying to take shortcuts through narrow alleyways, but this is a minor blemish on a solid gameplay model.Īll the action in Midtown Madness 3 takes place from an easily viewable, wide-angle overhead perspective that is always centered on your car. Your car zips around with a nice sense of speed cornering works pretty well and the controls are simple to a fault. The game's driving mechanics are generally very good. It's a lot of fun to switch up your ride between levels to see which vehicle will give you an optimum time or provide you with a bit of extra challenge. Minis, on the other hand, are extremely nimble, which is good, because if you run into anything, you'll come to a crashing halt. For instance, the ambulance has the lowest top speed of the four, but it's big enough to knock traffic out of the way without even slowing down. Each of these cars has an appreciably different feel, top speed, and mass. You're assigned your vehicle for the first two tasks, but you have a choice between the ambulance, the Cooper, and two unlockable sports cars in checkpoint and blitz. Blitz, the final gameplay option, is another basic race, except that you can take your route of choice through the checkpoints, which are all present on your radar at the beginning of the race.Įach of these major tasks-paramedic, delivery guy, checkpoint, and blitz-comprises four missions/races, representing a grand total of 16 different levels. The second major mode, checkpoint, is a straightforward series of races through a number of ordered checkpoints (surprise!) against two other drivers. You get to drive a Mini Cooper in delivery guy, where you must race a rival delivery woman to a series of drop zones. You have to dash all over the city, picking up patients and bringing them to the hospital before your time limit expires. In paramedic, you're behind the wheel of an ambulance. The first choice, career mode, is split up into two submodes: paramedic and delivery guy. Midtown Madness 3 consists of three basic gameplay modes, all of which take place in the famed City of Lights-Paris. Since when were ambulances supposed to cause accidents? Unfortunately, even if the gameplay is a blast, the ride is altogether too short to keep less casual driving game fans on the road for long. The 2D version of Midtown Madness 3, the first of Microsoft's properties to hit handsets, does an admirable job of capturing its source material's frenetic driving action. The game puts the focus on getting to the finish line rather than putting it on how you get there. The Midtown Madness series is a collection of racing games that takes place in wide-open representations of real cities.