Midtown Madness 2 is a free roam racing/arcade sequel to
Midtown Madness, part of the
Midtown Madness series, developed by
Angel Studios (now
Rockstar San Diego) and published by
Microsoft Game Studios, which features a range of vehicles which can be driven around
London and
San Francisco.
[edit] Gameplay
The game features
Blitz,
Checkpoint,
Circuit, and
Cruise modes, which are all derived from the original
Midtown Madness game. Winning Blitz, Checkpoint and Circuit races allows you to unlock new vehicles and paint jobs. The Cruise mode lets you roam freely around the two
open world recreations of London and San Francisco.
A
Crash Course can be completed in each of the cities. The
Cab Driving School in
London follows an extremist view of a
London Cab driver, where a player must complete objectives in a
London cab. The
Stunt Driver course in
San Francisco allows the player to gain experience in stunt driving for a Hollywood movie, using the
Ford Mustang Fastback.
Players can change variables which affect the vehicle's performance and visual appearance of the game before starting a race, such as the weather and time of day. Additionally,
police vehicles frequency can be modified, as with the amount of
traffic and
pedestrians.
Every race or cruise would begin with someone commenting. These commenters would also be heard at the end of a race (not a cruise) saying something that depends on your position upon finishing. The commenters would be different for each race, and they are different for each city (i.e. someone commenting in San Francisco would not be heard in London, or vice versa). These include for San Francisco: a newscaster, a
hippie, a stunt driving instructor, a short-tempered film director; for London: a
Scottish man, an
English woman, and (presumably through her elegant-sounding voice)
Queen Elizabeth II, although the woman mispronounces English words using the American slang terms instead.
There are a wide variety of iconic vehicles to choose from, such as the
Aston Martin DB7 Vantage,
New Mini Cooper and the
Audi TT. Each vehicle includes a number of unique paint jobs. Some vehicles also contain unlockable special paint jobs, accessed by completing certain races or
Crash Course challenges (or getting a mod off
Midtown Madness Archive)
Additional vehicles, which existed in the Midtown Madness 2
beta, were extracted and replaced in the
final version; the
American LaFrance Silver Eagle Firetruck, a
Moon Rover and the
Cadillac Eldorado Seville 1959, the latter of which was officially integrated with
Midtown Madness 3.
Driving Freightliner Century in a race
Many
fans of the game have also created their own vehicles, based on other popular real life or toy vehicles, ranging from the
Shelby Mustang GT500 to
Lego carts to the
De Lorean DMC-12, in both the original and
Back to the Future designs.
[edit] Multiplayer
Support for multiplayer gaming via
IP address,
serial cable, and analogue
modem is built-in. Additionally, the game’s multiplayer menu includes a link to the
MSN Gaming Zone, which offered Midtown Madness 2 lobbies until 19 June 2006. Similar online gaming sites still support multiplayer gaming and also through
instant messenger clients. Multiplayer clients use Midtown Madness 2's built-in
DirectPlay support to launch and manage multiplayer sessions. The player could also choose to drive in Muiliplayer featuring a Hong Kong Route.
[edit] Modifications
Many areas of the game are open to
modification. These additions can easily be added to the game, as they are compressed in the
zip file format (the file extension is renamed to
.ar, in order to be compatible with the game). New vehicles can be added to the game. These are generally formed by fans producing models from scratch, with real world textures applied. The game's vehicle AI (such as traffic and police vehicles) can also be redesigned. New locales (cities) can also be added to the game. Similarly, there have been modifications of the existing cities, which add components built from scratch and those already available from the game's source files. Physics modifications have also been produced, which vary the world and entity properties of the game, such as modifications which make city objects more durable or realistic. A "drive on water" patch allows the player to easily drive to previously inaccessible areas of the game, such as
Alcatraz and the
Marin County land mass beyond its terminating loop. Bus routes can also be created to mimic real-life bus driving, or bus racing. Most YouTube videos on Midtown Madness 2 feature
Hong Kong bus routes from
Kowloon Motor Bus,
New World First Bus and
Citybus, using vehicles that are painted in liveries of the bus companies and modeled after their real-life counterparts. Cities for different Hong Kong bus routes are also released with the basic shape of the roads, the travel routes, and some models of the buildings along the route.
[1] There are also small communities of UK buses as well.
[edit] Development
[edit] External links
System requirements
Pentium II 266
MHz, 32
MB RAM, 350 MB
hard drive space, 8 MB
graphics card,
DirectX 7.x or higher
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