It's a case of horses for courses, and the ten vehicles on offer have genuinely different characteristics in terms of handling, speed, durability and so forth. Talk About The WeatherĬhicago may be synonymous with wind, but rain and snow play their part here, and driving is noticeably affected by adverse weather conditions. In fact, in some races you can actually plan your route in order to avoid the busies. There's much fun to be had in giving them the runaround, and great satisfaction to be gleaned from glancing into the rear-view mirror to see a police car drive straight into the bollard that you've expertly negotiated. However, the cops appear to be graduates of The Blues Brothers' school of motoring, and the artificial stupidity has been particularly well-implemented. Having a police car slew across your path with the finish line in sight is enough to provoke a wry grin at best, and a volley of foul and abusive language at worst. The police obviously take a dim view of unauthorised street races, and once alerted to a felony will be all over you like a cheap suit. The latter two modes take place with incidental traffic in full effect, often leading to the midtown madness of the title. Circuit races are over charted courses, with other roads blocked off Blitz races take place against the clock and Checkpoint races involve clearing all points before your opponents. Planes fly overhead, traffic stops at red lights, and the police even have their own network.Ĭity simulation is a different game altogether though, and what we're talking here is action-packed racing, the game featuring a variety of different modes, with success unlocking further vehicles and tracks. It's very well done though, and effortlessly conveys the sense of being in a fully functioning, living city. Clearly, some kind of artistic licence has been taken, and what we have is a slightly compressed version of the real thing, comprising all the major landmarks. That city is Chicago, Illinois, which to the less geographically minded is somewhere in America near a big lake. No guns, no gimmicks, just accurately modelled cars and a meticulously recreated city.

Instead of pissing about inventing hover vehicles that race on the moon, or resurrecting some obscure sport, what they've done is to take a modern-day city and fill it with authentic vehicles. Not so Angel Studios, the talent behind Microsoft's Midtown Madness. And when it comes to racing games, you might as well forget it, with most developers showing about as much ingenuity as the average boy band. In these cynical days of 'reissue, repackage, reevaluate', an original game is about as rare as proverbial rocking horse shit.

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