The popular Midtown Madness franchise began on the PC in 1999. Now it's the era of the Xbox and the third incarnation of Midtown Madness has arrived. It comes with two huge, great looking cities to explore and race in, as well as some of the best Xbox Live action yet. However, the single player and the voice acting don't live up to the rest of the game.

The selling point of the Midtown Madness games has always been having a huge city and having chaotic races in them. The cities, Washington DC and Paris, both certainly are huge. You could easily spend hours in Cruise Mode just exploring one of them, trying to locate all the special paint jobs for the different cars. They also look good, with lots of different building types, parks, and meandering roads. Better yet, the game renders them well, so you'll never have to worry about framerate loss as you frantically try to make it to your next checkpoint. There are lots of smashable items on the side of roads too. You can knock down carts, light poles, traffic lights, advertisements, and many other objects, but there are two odd exceptions to this. You can't hit a person, which is understandable, but somewhat amusing when you race towards a group of people carrying huge Xbox boxes and they all nimbly leap out of your way at the last second. The second exception is trees, which you just safely pass through.

There are also a lot of cars to unlock, but your initial lineup is not that impressive. Thankfully the selection screen displays all the cars you don't have and tells you exactly what to do to unlock them, if you feel so inclined. Each race also adjusts what cars you will go against by what car you are driving. So you'll never have to try to outrun a Camaro with a dump truck. Each race in each single player mode is a set of checkpoints that you can hit in any order, something the hokey game manual stresses often. Despite how often the game boasts of its freeform manner, you'll usually find yourself going along the same exact route as the other drivers just to keep up. The single player modes don't differ from each other that radically, except for Cruise mode which allows you to simply wander about the cities with no time limit. Other than that you can choose to compete with AI in checkpoint races, race against your own best time in checkpoint races, or choose to "work undercover". Work Undercover Mode is basically racing against AI in a checkpoint race, only now you have to listen to terrible voice acting trying to tell you a story about why you are racing. It sets itself up as a detective story, but you'll soon stop paying attention to it completely.

Xbox Live is where Midtown Madness 3 really shines. First off, you don't have to unlock cars in single player to use them in multiplayer, freeing you from the obligation of a lot of tedious replays through checkpoint after checkpoint just to be able to compete. There's also a wealth of fun play modes available online. Capture the Gold is similar to capture the flag, where players attempt to ram whoever has the gold to steal it before they return to their hide out. Hunter starts off with one Hunter in a police car and everyone else as Prey. The Prey cannot see the Hunter on their radars, but the Hunter can see them. Every time a Hunter rams into someone they are turned into Hunters until they get down to only one Prey left standing. Tag also has players ramming into each other, as they desperately attempt to get rid of It status before time runs out. Stayaway is the opposite of Tag, where one person has the "rabbit" and must keep other people from stealing it from him. However, the rabbit slows down the person holding it, making the game more difficult. All these modes are fast-paced and entertaining, and it's easy to get started playing since you can drop in or out midgame instead of waiting in a lobby for enough players to join up.

With cartoony controls, fast cars, and great multiplayer modes, Midtown Madness 3 is an excellent buy for any Xbox Live player. However, the game is not a shining beacon of single player goodness and racing game enthusiasts without Live support would be better off looking at other titles.