Motor City Online

Originally published on my HLTB profile.

Originally written and published on July 22nd, 2025.

Motor City Online is a spin-off multiplayer title of the Need for Speed series, or rather, was. From what is left playable with the offline launcher made by fans, it feels pretty interesting and ambitious, though.

The physics feel solid, the selection of vehicles is nice, and I was especially surprised by the details on the tracks and by their many moving pieces. There was also a surprising amount of destructible objects, especially considering that this game is build on High Stakes as its foundation. I don't recall even Porsche Unleashed, with its new own engine, having this level of detail in the movable objects department. And most importantly out of all, pedestrians, with multiple animation sets too. People such as the grid-girl, drunkards in the red-light district or the workers on the fields all have different animation sets. Maybe it isn't that impressive, considering Midtown Madness did it in 1999, but still worth the mention I think, when even nowadays this is not that common of a feature for racing games. I really enjoyed some of these tracks, like the Hall Homestead one with many destructible fences and objects, combined with the very old-school "foresty" environment or the ChemCo Processing Vats with the various hazards and split paths. You don't really see similar tracks with such track design in modern racing games anymore.

The car list is limited in scope, but I do appreciate that. Except for the exceptions of Supra and Eclipse, the list is composed of old, heavy American gas guzzlers and muscle cars. Many of the cars are actually rarely seen in any other racing games, like I can't remember ever seeing for example Chevrolet Nomad or Ford Galaxie in any other game, and taking a peek at IGCD, they really weren't in that many titles, especially any big-name ones. So really, this focused car list with its more niche inclusions is very nice to see, even for someone who doesn't really care for muscle cars or Americana in the first place.

The driving feel wasn't bad at all, and expectedly heavy and sluggish for the cars available, but I wonder what difference the upgrade system would have. From what I heard, the performance upgrade system was actually relatively in-depth, so it is quite a shame there's not a way to use it now. Also, the damage model is solid, but that is not that surprising considering I already mentioned it is based on High Stakes. I do feel like it looks slightly better than that one, or even the one in Porsche Unleashed, since even the paintwork is being scratched away.

It is quite a shame this was shut down so soon, in 2003 and only parts of it are playable nowadays. It seems interesting and ambitious, but sadly it got killed. Such a shame, as it is fascinating to think about what it could have been and how it could have evolved if it succeeded. And to be honest, I do kind of in some ways prefer this over the likes of Need for Speed: World, due to the usage of designed closed off tracks, rather than relying on an open world. Although, I would not be surprised if we have hardware limitations to thank for that. It would be very interesting to see a modern spiritual successor of something like this, but alas.

Kind of hard, and a bit pointless, to rate something like this normally and fairly now, given the circumstances, but I think it still ends up being a pretty solid game, worthy of a look even if only for the novelty, the history and its connection to the Need for Speed franchise. 

 

Overall rating: 70%

Playtime: 3h 25m

Played on PC.