Games WORLD: Midtown Madness 1 Free Download Full Version For PC

Midtown Madness Racing game have become a dime a dozen on the PC and, to be perfectly honest, most of them suck just ask our very own Stephen Butts he's been the delegated racing reviewer for about three months because we've all gotten sick of them around the office and, well, he's the new guy so he has to take a few kicks in the belly). Well, with Midtown Madness, Microsoft and Angel Studios has broken the mold and has offered up a lot of fun at the office lately, so much that the console freaks specifically Matt and Craig) are starting to see the PC in a whole new light.

Midtown Madness features four single-player modes: Blitz, Circuit, Checkpoint, and Cruise. In Blitz, the player must reach a destination within a time limit; in Circuit, the player races other vehicles; in Checkpoint, the game adds the complication of other traffic, such as police cars and pedestrians; and in Cruise, the player simply explores the city. Players have a choice of up to ten vehicles, although only five are available at the start. To unlock the other cars, players must achieve goals such as winning a certain number of races. Before a race, if the player has previously won the race, they can change the race duration or the weather, which can affect vehicle performance. Checkpoint mode allows players to set the frequency of traffic, police cars, and pedestrians.

Midtown Madness requires some pretty powerful hardware in order to look its best, and even at its best it doesn't look as good as it might have and often suffers from choppy frame rates. With all its options turned on, the vehicles look nice and shiny although at times a little too flat. They get damaged when they run into things, although this effect isn't entirely convincing either. Other details really stand out, like the bright traffic lights and the different weather and time conditions that manage to evoke a particular beauty about the city through their sheer variety. But while it's great to see Chicago's landmarks and its smaller streets modeled so carefully, it's too bad that most of the storefronts in the game are generic and often repeated, even on the same block. Thus Midtown Madness approaches, but doesn't actually reach, that meticulous level of realism and detail that driving games must necessarily strive for.

Nevertheless, it's fun to be able to drive like a maniac and beat up a Beetle while racing the city cops. If you feel there's some scathingly detrimental social undercurrent to this game's affording you the freedom to drive however you like, then by all means keep off the road. But Midtown Madness doesn't present itself as some sort of perfectly realistic simulation: Pedestrians deftly dive out of the way of traffic, cars that are struck and sent airborne safely return to their routine, and mailboxes and parking meters that are uprooted eventually regenerate in their rightful places. Midtown Madness lets you safely run amok, because you know you can't in real life.

There's a lot of running amok to be done. The cruise mode just lets you drive wherever you like without restriction, but a number of other modes, including checkpoint races, larger-scale circuit races, timed races, and even a multiplayer-only cops and robbers game add a lot of value as you try to beat your rivals, the clock, or both. Your computer-controlled rivals drive aggressively and seek out shortcuts, while you yourself must choose to either adhere to the rules of the road or take some serious risks in reaching your destination before the other cars do. Even in these more straightforward racing modes, Midtown Madness lets you drive however you want. Add to that a fairly realistic physics model, good graphics and sound, and a lot of variety, and it's easy to see why Midtown Madness is so much fun. You'll find yourself wishing it was even more detailed, but all the same, you'll wish all other driving games paid as much attention to detail as this one.