For Beginner

Midtown Madness 2 for PC full version with system requirements

Review:
There are few sure things in life, but one of them is that if Microsoft puts out a racing game with "Madness" in the title, you might as well grab it as soon as it hits store shelves. Midtown Madness 2 is no exception to this rule. It doesnt matter whether youre a hard-core simulation fan or you simply crave speed, destruction, and mayhem in your games - if you want to play a very fun racing game, then Midtown Madness 2 is for you.

But thats not to say that Midtown Madness 2 is ideal. In fact, it seems as though it could have used a couple more weeks in testing. On several occasions the game completely locked up on a fairly standard system (Celeron 450MHz, 256MB RAM, TNT2 video card with the latest drivers), and only through uninstalling and reinstalling did the problem finally seem to go away. As in some other racing games, the brakes dont truly function as real-life brakes when both pedals are configured to use the y-axis: Slamming on the pedal doesnt lock the wheels but merely decelerates your car more quickly. An attempt to correct this by configuring the pedals to use two axes revealed a bug - the brakes worked in reverse, forcing you to keep the pedal down for no brakes and releasing it to stop. Your only true braking option is the hand brake, which tends to cause unpredictable slides when all you really want to do is slow down in a hurry. Also, at the beginning of one race, my car was positioned facing in the opposite direction of the other cars, and stepping on the gas sent me hurtling backward along with them even though I was in first gear. Fortunately, none of these problems were persistent or detrimental to how enjoyable the game turns out to be.

You can actually work your way around most of these issues, and in fact you might never experience a game crash yourself. But theres no getting past the games rather pathetic engine noises. When you see a 68 Mustang Fastback tearing through downtown San Francisco, you want to hear a mighty rumbling sound thatll make bystanders think the big earthquakes finally happening. Instead, the cars in Midtown Madness 2 give off a little purr that barely changes in tone even when youre redlining the tachometer. Even in an arcade-style racing game such as this, its good to be able to hear when you should change gears, rather than constantly have to check the tachometer.

The occasional bugs and the weak sound effects are the only low points in Midtown Madness 2, because otherwise, the game is a blast. Midtown Madness players whove grown used to screaming through Chicago will be happy to find two new venues featured in the sequel: San Francisco and London. As in the original game, both cities have been meticulously modeled to include many notable landscapes. In San Fran, youll see Coit Tower, the Palace of Fine Arts, and of course the Golden Gate Bridge; in London, you can tool around Trafalgar Square and even ram through the gates of Buckingham Palace and do a few donuts on the well-manicured lawn. Read more

System requirements:
CPU Type: Pentium II
CPU Speed in MHz: 266MHz
RAM: 32MB, 64MB (Windows 2000)
Hard Drive Space: 250MB
Sound Card: DrectSound Compatible
CD Drive Speed: 4X
Graphics Type: SVGA
Graphics Resolution(s): 800x600
Compatible Devices:
Software (DirectX 5.0, etc.): DirectX 7.0a

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