Race Editor

Any city that you have unlocked is available in this mode; you can fly through the streets and drop checkpoints anywhere you like. There are extensive adjustment options available in the race options menu and you can change the weather, time of day and so on.

Level Design

It’s not really a case of level design, its city design, they might not be the most realistic portrayals of cities yet but they don’t need to be. Rockstar’s emphasis is on fun and madness, so they are larger than life – full of short cuts and mega-jumps, in fact MC3 is probably one of the best games to catch big air in when you’re racing through the streets – it leaves the competition behind in that respect.

Graphics

The Xbox has the edge over the PS2 with this game but only just, Rockstar have really pulled out the stops to keep the other console version looking as nice and shiny as the Xbox version. There a good amount of graphical eye-candy in this game, with motion blur, bloom effects and good atmospheric lighting all round. These machines look good and they are shiny rides especially with a lick of pearlescent paint, the graphics engine pumps out a good solid framerate on both machines and the sense of speed is maintained throughout.

By the look of things, and we pushed this game hard to review it, even tho Rockstar seemed to be nervously awaiting the review (eh Ben?) there’s no pop-up and the game tears along at an amazing rate of knots, even possibly out burning-out games like Burnout 3.

Models

These are some nice machines and Rockstar have gone for a slightly more arcade design that trying to replicate every nut and bolt, faceplate, headlight and feature on the vehicles – what you get however is top notch stuff and you can tell they’ve spent a lot of time looking at the design of the vehicles from real life, they have a distinct Rockstar touch and that’s a trademark I never want to see change.

There’s a lot of difference between the player/opponent vehicles and the regular traffic, but it’s only a minor niggle since when you’re flying by at 200mph you’re not exactly looking at how detailed the other cars that make up the civilian populace of the game are.