If you can't get Live, then you can try System Link or split screen modes, but you'll run out of enthusiasm for MM3 rather quicker than you would otherwise do.
Nevertheless, the structure here could have been better - we can't help thinking that the three modes could have been spliced together somehow to provide one long, progressive challenge instead of three self-contained mini-games.īut, as we confessed at the top of the review, the single player is buttered mushrooms and garlic bread to the filet mignon of succulent online play.
These are probably the most rewarding sections, and as you tear through these you'll start to unlock some proper, licensed cars from the likes of Audi, VW and others. Meanwhile, the rest of the single player goes some way to making up for French nemesis Mathilda's horrendous accent, with the Blitz races in particular forcing us to think long and hard at times about our path finding. What's more, you only have to complete three missions in each vehicle to unlock the next section, although you have the option of stomaching a fourth, often brutal mission in order to unlock that car throughout the game. Unlike Midnight Club 2, which we spent a lot more time swearing profusely about. It doesn't help that you spend most of the time driving rubbish vehicles either - in a game with as much stopping, starting and handbrake turning as this, surely a knackered taxi, a plodding security van and a slip-slidey limo weren't the best choices? I 'ate you copper, and you smell!įortunately the missions require more or less exactly the right balance of skill, city planning and outright luck, and you'll almost always get them within a few goes. At first you'll race around Paris, tearing down the Champs-Elysées, roaring through back alleys and even leaping across the Seine, before embarking on a similar run past the White House and along freeways at 220kph.īut unfortunately the missions in Undercover mode, which could be considered the bulk of the single player, are mostly just pick up/drop off variants, punctuated by the occasional race, and set to the indignant whine of half-arsed Allo Allo-inspired voice acting. Good moaningįor a start, it's split into a variety of play modes - the central "Undercover" option is a sort of story mode, which has you performing strings of jobs driving taxis, security vans, limousines, police cars and such, whilst two of our old favourites - Blitz and Checkpoint modes - lurk under the banner of "Single Race" options, along with the obligatory Cruise mode.īecause the game boasts two cities - intricately constructed (and destructible) incarnations of Paris and Washington - it's a bit like having two whole games to play.
#Midtown madness 3 cars Pc
However since our first date was to be broadband deprived (pity me and my trips to the family home to do PC tech support), we can tell you plenty about the single player game. Indeed, we can't see the various single player challenges taking more than five or six hours to complete, and there's no reward for going back through with feistier vehicles.īut in a way, the single player game is just an appetiser for the superb multiplayer mode, which relegates Midnight Club 2 almost to the bin barely a fortnight after its Xbox debut. It's not as if it does everything particularly well, either, or that it presents more of a challenge than its two most comparable adversaries. You'd think that with Midnight Club 2 and Burnout 2, we'd be fixed for arcade racers by now, but apparently not. Driving around real-life cities is nothing new, and yet here we are in the middle of 2003 clocking up 10-hour sessions on Midtown Madness.