Game of the Month: June 2003

With all the videogames that come out each and every month, it can get to be quite the difficult task when deciding which title to spend your hard-earned money on. Granted you could go by our review scores alone and weed through the long list of games in search of something that scored high or low, but what if you had somewhere else to turn to? Only one editor wrote those reviews after all, and their piece isn't necessarily reflective of the entire channel's feelings towards that particular game. It's entirely possible for instance; that the types of games that Douglass Perry likes are the complete opposite of what you care for.

Rather than wait until the end of the year like we normally do, your incredibly masculine friends at IGN.com have decided to employ a monthly tribute to the weeks that were. We're resolved to illustrate to our readers what we thought was the very best game for each system over the previous 30 days, and tell you exactly the reason why. And not only are we going to do it on the last day of every month in 2003, we'll be speaking in unison instead of individually.

But how does it work? Simple. Any game released during the preceding month is eligible for the award and is taken through a battery of tests by every editor on that particular channel (in laymen's terms, that means we play it). After we've finished evaluating every game to come down the pipeline, we put our heads together and decide on a single "best of" winner that's worthy of the title "IGN Game of the Month". Pretty simple, don't you think? Now that we have the guidelines out of the way, let's move on and congratulate this month's winner…

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Game of the Month
June 2003
Midtown Madness 3
Developed by DICE.
Published by Microsoft
Released: June 17, 2003
Why We Picked It: If you love Xbox Live games, buy. If you like racing games, buy. If you like the idea of driving a MINI over the cobblestoned streets of Paris, buy. As a single player game alone, it comes up a bit short when compared to Rockstar's Midnight Club 2. However as a multiplayer game, MM3 separates itself from any and all competition because, as first party title, you're getting a tremendous amount of Xbox Live functionality. This is the most impressive first-party title since Rallisport Challenge, and it's well worth your heard-earned videogame dollars.

(Buy it at the IGN Gamestore!)

Runner-Up: Midnight Club 2 (Rockstar)

Midnight Club II might be the most complete arcade racer on the Xbox. It's the next generation answer for racing fans who've been waiting for the successor to San Francisco Rush. I can't deny how much pure fun I had blazing through the streets at speeds way too fast to be safe and I'm convinced that other games --not just racers-- need to bite what Midnight Club II did with its single player career mode. Some of the technical elements aren't what they could be but MC2 manages to do the improbable: it stands out from the crowd of Xbox racers.

(Buy it at the IGN Gamestore!)

Check back next month where we'll give you the best games all over again.

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