The visual side of Midtown Madness 3 seems to be progressing nicely. As far as downloadable content is concerned, the development team and Microsoft seem to be set on offering additional cars for download, but other features are also being taken into consideration, such as downloadable areas for both cities. Of course, the cruise, blitz, and checkpoint options (which have support for up to eight players) will also be supported online, and cruise and checkpoint will have split-screen and system-link support as well. There will be three modes specifically playable over Xbox Live, including tag, stay away (which is like tag, only multiple people can be considered "it"), and capture the gold, where one team of drivers has to explore the city looking for treasure while the other team has to protect it. To extend the replay value of the game even further, Midtown Madness 3 features extensive Xbox Live support. In any case, the career mode seems like it will offer a nice break from the standard racing action found in other parts of the game. Other careers have different objectives-for example, as a taxi driver, you have to pick up customers and drop them off, much like you do in Crazy Taxi, albeit with a little less craziness. For example, in one of the later missions, you'll have to tail a suspect without getting too close, which is rather difficult considering that the car you're tailing radically changes speed and direction. But as you progress through the career mode, the objectives become a little more difficult and require much more driving skill and general knowledge of the city. When you start the career mode delivering pizzas, for instance, the first objective is fairly simple-you have to make it to several points in a city before your rival does. There are 54 missions in the career mode, spanning 14 different professions such as pizza deliverer, taxi driver, chauffeur, security guard, paramedic, police officer, and even special agent (which features only three missions, while all of the others have four individual missions). Other than the technical aspects of the game, the biggest addition to the Midtown Madness series is the career mode. The blitz mode also returns from previous games in the series, and it also features 20 races. For example, if it appears that the yellow arrow isn't giving precise enough directions and you're just about to enter a major intersection, then the red arrow might appear and tell you to turn right. In older Midtown Madness games, the direction of the checkpoint was indicated solely by an enormous arrow at the top of the screen, and while Midtown Madness 3 retains this feature, the development team has added a second red arrow that indicates turning direction. If you place first in three races, then you'll gain access to an entirely new car. In addition, the checkpoint mode spans 20 races, in which you have to race to several different points in a section of the city, whether it's Washington DC or Paris. This mode pits you against cars in your class, so if you've selected a 1967 Mustang Fastback, then you'll race against cars that have similar abilities. Interestingly, the pedestrian density can have quite an impact on the game, as ambient cars will actually attempt to avoid pedestrians that are darting out in the street, creating yet another obstacle to drive around.įans of previous games in the series should be familiar with one of Midtown Madness 3's other modes, the checkpoint mode. The cruise mode offers a few different customization options as well, including pedestrian density, traffic density, and police density. Obviously, if you're driving a hummer, a semi, or a bus, it's going to be a bit problematic to accomplish such a task, but if you're using a Volkswagen Beetle, a Mini Cooper, or any one of the smaller cars in Midtown Madness 3, then it's not quite as difficult. In one situation, you'll have to navigate in between the pillars of the Jefferson Memorial to gain access to the rotunda and the power-up located just at the base of Jefferson's statue. In the cruise mode you essentially have free rein over the city and can drive to any accessible spot on the map, but while you're tearing around the city, you'll want to keep an eye out for power-ups that can be used to strengthen the individual abilities of your car. In fact, Paris alone is approximately the size of the London and San Francisco maps from Midtown Madness 2 combined, so you'll have plenty of areas to explore within both cities, especially in the cruise mode. Like Midtown Madness 2, the third game in the series will feature two different cities, Washington DC and Paris, both of which have been modeled closely after their real-life counterparts and are generally much large than the environments in Midtown Madness 2. Microsoft dropped by the GameSpot offices with a new build of Midtown Madness 3, its city-based driving game for the Xbox.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |