Midtown Madness 3

To put it in a nutshell, this is one of those games that they give away for free (being part of the X-Box Beast Pack) because people would get very ticked off if they were made to fork out a good hundred dollars for it. It tries very hard to create an atmosphere, but what it eventually comes off as is a very tryhard Carmageddon. What made Carmageddon fun was the total freedom it allowed. Players were free to go anywhere and do anything they liked so long as they eventually completed one of three goals in each level. This is exactly what doesn't make Midtown Madness 3 any fun.

All of the races involve racing down a very strict and narrow path through checkpoints. This in itself is not so bad, but the problem is that if you should take so much as one late turn or one roll off the middle of the track, you can count on losing, and thus not progressing at all in the game. The disciplinarian style of the game gets in the way of any fun whatsoever, and insult is added to injury when you're in the undercover mode and should happen to fail a level. The voiceovers, quite obviously done by the programmers, are insulting and annoying enough to prompt throwing the controller at the display.

About the only salvation for the game is the two-player mode, in which the two players race cars through a series of checkpoints in order to see who can get through in the quickest time. This is the only genuinely fun part of the game, as well as the reason why the code to unlock all the cars and tracks is so frequently used. Nobody is going to want to bother playing all of the single-player levels in order to unlock them, but they make the two-player mode so much more fun.

In short, the game borders on false advertising, especially since pedestrians cannot be run over and cars cannot be totalled in an assaultive style. Sure, it is set in the middle of a town, and it may well be the third game in the series, but the madness part is very highly questionable. This game only gets a 2 out of 10 from me because of the two-player mode.

I don't get why so many people don't know about or don't like this game when it's just so much fun to play. Both Paris and Washington D.C. recreation maps are filled with so much detail and so many things to see and explore and so many different cars to unlock. The graphics are great for 2003 and the game also just has such a unique and charming atmosphere and personality with a likeable sense of humour. The racing tracks around both maps are also great and well-designed taking you through so many different pathways and secrets through both of the very detailed maps as well as the driving/delivery and undercover missions where so much of the game's unique humour comes from it's voiced characters. The game has hardly aged at all with tight and responsive controls, sharp detailed graphics, colours and car models alongside a smooth frame rate that rarely ever slows down, which can't be said for so many other open worlds driving games at the time.

I do think MM3 is one of the Original Xbox's better open world driving titles that isn't GTA or Driver (did Driver come out on Xbox, maybe it was just playstation). I do know that this game was a massive departure from the previous two MM games that were made by Angel Studios while this one was an early title made by DICE which went on to make the Battlefield series, but I haven't played those two games so that might just be bias coming from my side. I know that MM3 was nothing like it's two predecessors, but this is still great fun and is a high-quality racing game with loads of content and fun to be had. I had so many great memories with this game when it first came out which also came with Xbox Live multiplayer which is unfortunately now dead. The default music in this game is okay, but it also came with the feature to import your own CD library albums and songs which is a great feature with MM3 being one of the very first games to have this option. I had a CD of the Hot Wheels top hits of 2003 around the time of this game with songs like Hero - Nickelback, Where's your head at, The Logical Song - Scooter, The MIB II theme song - Black Suits Coming, Creeping Up Slowly, How You Remind Me also by Nickelback and more 2003 Hip-Hop/Nu Metal songs which actually really fitted well with the game's early 2000s atmosphere. I do have nostalgic memories from this game, so yes, more bias from me.

Anyway Midtown Madness 3 is a game you should definitely try out if you have an Xbox and see it lying around somewhere online or in a game store bargain bin. It's a fun, well designed and content filled game which is still just as much fun to play as it was when it first came out 15 years ago