The key to unlocking new vehicles is to play the Blitz and Checkpoint races. A lot of the missions are great fun and completing them will unlock new vehicles, but alone they don’t make the game a worthwhile purchase. To progress to the next job, three of the missions must be completed. These jobs range from Crazy Taxi-style deliveries to mad jump challenges, and each job is made up of a number of missions. jobs centering on the film-maker brothers, Stephano and Michael Tortellini. Each city has seven jobs, with the Paris jobs revolving around a famous race car driver and the Washington D.C. The main single-player game puts you in the role of an undercover cop working in Paris or Washington D.C. Set over two fully-modelled cities, Paris and Washington D.C., the game has a lot to offer. The game is more akin to Crazy Taxi, but with a much broader range of game modes and missions. Unlike GTA, the game is entirely vehicular-based, and it isn’t focused on high-powered performance cars like Midnight Club 2. In appearance there are a lot of similarities to both Grand Theft Auto and Midnight Club 2, but Midtown Madness 3 is a very different game.

With a lot of expectation on their shoulders, have they delivered the definitive Xbox Live experience or is it another Microsoft Game Studios disaster?

The series has a big following from its days on the PC and is now in the hands of Dice, the developers of the excellent Rallisport Challenge for Xbox and PC. Xbox Live has played host to a number of good-quality games since its launch and Midtown Madness 3 is one of Microsoft’s big games this summer.

Midtown madness online play