Racing Madness (bundle) - PC Games

In Midtown Madness, you can career around the Chicago townscape and compete in 30 racing events, driving anything from a new Beetle to a city bus by way of a Ford Mustang GT. Monster Truck Madness 2 lets you get into something larger with 20 different trucks. Their disproportionately vast tyres provide lots of bounce and you'll spend a lot of time in the air. There are 10 tracks but straying from the route and taking to the landscape is fun too. The third game, Motocross Madness, is more of the same except for bikes. You can perform stunts, race on lots of tracks and even design your own. All three games can be played with multiple players to add a competitive edge.

The graphics aren't leading edge; compared to those in the Mercedes-Benz Truck Racing game, they lack detail. If your PC is a year or so old, however, you will find these Microsoft games run fast and furiously whereas your kit might struggle to show the Merc offering in its best light. All three games are good noisy painless destructive fun to the "tune" of a thumping soundtrack. You can add a tad of realism by playing with the Physics Realism setting in Midtown Madness or altering the suspension and tyres on your truck--but not much because that's not the point of these games. Think zoom, screech, crash, siren. --Mark Whitehorn