This is what you can call a late preview. With Midtown Madness 3 already in stores I received a copy of the beta to try out. A bit weird PR but I’m not complaining because the beta version looked pretty nice to me.

First thing that catches the eye is the menu design. It’s very vivid and fresh, something we haven’t seen from Microsoft up until now. Everything is done in bright colours and is smoothly animated.

In MidMad3 you get to race with 30 real cars in two real cities, Paris and Washington DC. The cities are fully working with busy traffic and jaywalking pedestrians. Cops are patrolling the streets ready to bust you when you step out of line and believe me, you will step out of line pretty soon. Getting from point A to B is so much more fun right through the park. There are quite a few game modes: Cruise, checkpoint, undercover and multiplayer being the most important. Cruise and checkpoint speak for themselves while undercover represents the “campaign” making you do all kinds of driving jobs for the police.

Let’s go to the graphics, something very important in this game because when you are driving through Paris you want to feel like you are really driving there.
When you see this game, it’s pretty obvious no one knows their hardware better then Microsoft. Both Paris and Washington look amazing and there is completely no slowdown when rendering all this eye candy. I mainly raced the Paris tracks and they feel so real. Most streets are very small with terraces and slow walking pedestrians everywhere, but the area around the Eiffel Tower has broad boulevards and traffic jam on some places.

The audio for the cars and surroundings is very nice but the voices with French accents in Paris are a bit cheesy if you ask me. The music was ok but not stunning.

The controls for the game are superb and there are enough settings to please everyone.
All cars in the game have a different feel with a plenty arcade touches. When doing a jump it gives the feeling like you are watching a cartoon. It’s a bit hard to explain but if you buy the game you’ll see what I mean. This is in no way meant negative because I liked it a lot. It gives the game a certain edge that will keep you racing longer.

The most anticipated part of the game is the Xbox-live part. This wasn’t working in the beta and I don’t own a Live kit but if stays lag-free this will be a blast. The split screen is already loads of fun so I can imagine the Live version will kick some major ass.

With some minor tweaks to the graphics (anti-aliasing) and sound, a bit more tracks and missions this game will surely rise above the rest in its genre and make it the standard for arcade racers on the Xbox and possibly on all platforms. You will know soon when I review the complete version.