Midtown Madness 3 the arcade racer you can drive almost any vehicle you like, from a garbage truck to a fast sporty model, the choice is yours, even a fire engine is in there.

Midtown Madness3 is all about racing around the streets of Paris or Washington D.C and don't worry about the scenery, you can smash your way through almost anything, except buildings, even the pedestrians have to jump and leap out of your way as you try to beat your opponents to the finish. That’s what the game is all about, finding shortcuts and ramps to jump ahead of your enemy, and never mind the

Mayhem you cause doing it! There’s plenty to do in this game, from working your way through the undercover missions to beating the clock through the checkpoints in Blitz, or racing against AI opponents in Checkpoint on the single player. You can even play Cruise in which you don't have to do anything, just drive around learning the routes and where the hidey holes and shortcuts can be found.

There are 4 modes of play in single player, Work Undercover where you start as a delivery driver and work your way up to a private eye or special agent, depending which city you are in, Cruise which allows you to drive around with no objectives to achieve, just learn your way around and find where short cuts can come in useful, Blitz where you race against the clock to go through all the checkpoints, and Checkpoint where you race against others to complete the circuit. Looking at your map and following the indicator arrows that appear where you must turn is essential if you want to win these matches, taking short cuts can help but you can also get lost unless you have learnt the roads really well.

All the races are fast and frantic as you try to beat the clock or your competitors, the cities are well drawn and I’m sure if you learn the routes you would probably be able to find your way around in the real thing. You have to complete races and the undercover jobs to unlock even more vehicles, although in multi-player they are all ready for you to drive, so the lazy people who just want to jump straight in and play their friends on live can jump into any vehicle they choose.

There aren’t many places you cannot drive through, except buildings, you can even go down into the tube stations and drive around the rail tracks, just try not to hit too many trains! Learning where these places are comes in useful for the live side of things, which brings me nicely on to the multiplayer modes.

Cruise which is the same as the single player one except you drive around with real people and friends on live, which is good if you host a private game and invite your drinking buddies in and just drive aimlessly around chewing the cud and knocking back a few cans of lager, or in my case bottles of cider.

Checkpoint which again is the same as the single player, beat your mates through the checkpoints to complete the circuits, knowledge of shortcuts come in handy here. Then the next four games are on the multi-player mode.

Capture the gold is all about driving over a sack of gold to pick it up, and take it back to your hideout to score, but keep an eye on your map as it shows where the others are, if they hit you they take your bag of gold and then you must catch him or her to retrieve it. You don't have to play across the entire cities in these games as you can barrier certain parts off to play in, which makes it a bit more frantic as you cannot lose them on the other side of the city.

Tag is tag on a timer. One person is "it" and must come into contact with another vehicle to pass it on, this must be done before the timer reaches zero, so the last person who is it when the clock runs out loses the game.

Hunter is probably the most played game on the multi-player game. The hunter is the person who begins the game in a police car and must tag the others to turn them into police cars too, the idea being that the last person to get caught wins the game, once two or three cars have been tagged and are all after you it gets more difficult and fun.

Stay away is like reverse tag, for some reason one person starts with a rabbit on top of their car, and the game is too keep it there for as long as possible, the longer you keep it the more points you get, if another car hits, you lose the rabbit and must chase them to get it back. Really the games are all different versions of tag but good fun to play, especially in team mode.

Now I’m not an arcade racer lover really, so when I first got this game I thought it might be going back in a day or two. Wrong! MM3 is good fast fun; the multi-player games are very good, and even more fun if you play them on teams. The graphics are fast and smooth, and there are spots of humour throughout the game. One disappointment I did find was there is no replay option on the single player; it would have been nice to watch you smashing your way round the city from different camera angles. Anyways, I like this game, if you are an arcade racing fan you will probably love it.