Madness (but shall otherwise remain anonymous). Had the chance to play
the game for an afternoon. I won't go into any bugs I encountered,
since that's not a fair thing to make public for a beta product.
Test system: P2333 Voodoo2 12MB (forgot to ask how much RAM, but I
think it's a lot).
Graphics/Sound:
No complaints here. A bit slow frame-rate wise, but keep in mind that
it's a beta, and this isn't Need For Speed - there's a LOT going on
here (a whole city being rendered, heavy traffic, other AI drivers,
pedestrians, various eye candy). It looks very good, though the
weather graphics (rain and snow) have been done better.
Despite the occasional slowdown, there is an excellent sensation of
speed in this game. There is a full complement of views, behind the
car, bumper cam, and***pits (fairly realistic ones, customized for
each car). I raced mainly in bumper cam because I can see more of
what's in front of me that way (when just driving around I liked using
the***pits). At times it very much reminds me of "The Blues
Brothers" car chase scenes.
Gameplay:
Highly ***ive. You know it's fun when you curse the "ready/set/go"
because it's too slow, you want to drive NOW! As mentioned in a few
online previews, it's very realistic - traffic obeys signals and road
signs and so on. It is fun just to drive around.
The racing is great fun, the best game since Need For Speed 1. Darting
in and out of traffic, running red lights, accidents and [occasional]
jumps - it just adds up to an adrenaline-packed experience. If you're
like me, you will find yourself often cursing the other drivers (then
laughing out loud at the joy of being so immersed in a computer game).
I have two gameplay complaints, one minor and the other not so minor:
1) It could use a skill level setting. I won most of the races I
tried, with practice, but I could see some people getting frustrated
with the difficulty of winning certain races.
2) The only real gameplay complaint I have is the implementation of
cops, unfortunately quite an integral part of gameplay. One problem is
that they [like the AI opponents] don't seem to take damage as easily
as your car does (of course, different cars take damage at different
rates - see below). A more serious flaw is that the cops ONLy chase
you, not the AI racers. That takes a lot of fun out of the car chases.
If you have a cop on your tail and pass an AI driver the cop should
key onto him (that was one of the few things they got right in NFS 3).
One other gameplay comment: I hope they allow the game to be
expandable by allowing users to create there own races (i.e., choose
where checkpoints go. This would be easy for them to implement, would
add almost unlimited replayability, and would even allow the creation
of new kinds of races (e.g., no checkpoints, just a start and finish
line, where you finds the best route).
Driving Model/Realism:
I'm not sure it would be classified as a sim, but the driving/physics
model is MUCH more realistic than on-rails dreck like NFS 2/3. You
have oversteer and understeer, power sliding turns (but they are
tricky), and a different feel to each vehicle. Again the closest game
it reminds me off here is NFS 1. Good accidents, though not quite as
realistic as NFS1.
FF/car damage:
I'm including these two items together, because they are related. The
FF implementation isn't bad. No where near as good as Viper (what
is?), it's not a realistic implementation with accurate wheel pulls
and tire loss/grip. It's more of the collision/road texture thing. But
there is so MUCH going on with it that it works better than
circuit-racing games that have gone this route. As your car gets
damaged you will lose performance, and you will get wheel shake (from
mild too severe). Vehicle modeling includes "mass", which affects both
collisions and the rate at which you take damage.
Overall Midtown Madness looks like a very good effort and I've no
doubt I will buy it the first day it is available.
Joe