Midnight Club: Los Angeles review

After a long hiatus, Midnight Club brings the LA streets to the PS3 and 360

When the Midnight Club series first started back in 2000 it didn't have much notable competition in the street/import style racing games, however since then Need for Speed underground has stepped in and has been causing Midnight Club to evolve to keep up with EA's giant racing series. There's been no bigger jump for the series than the jump to the current generation systems, some changes for the better, and sadly some for the worse.

It's fun to just explore the city

A most notable achievement for Midnight Club:LA is the graphics, the screenshots look great, but seeing everything move along at a very steady frame rate in such an amazing city looks fantastic. The city of LA is Midnight Club's best feature, now I've never been to LA so I can't compare to the real thing, but the layout feels a lot like a living and breathing city. You'll see shopping districts, parking lots, plazas all placed around the city with great attention to detail and it's all packed together so tightly that you won't find yourself traveling through boring map areas just to get from one half of the city to the other. Managing such a large and detailed area without any load times is impressive, however this does feel like it must be pushing the 360 a little too hard, as sometimes when jumping from the map it can take several seconds for textures to re-appear and occasionally they don't come back at all. While driving around the city you'll find traffic to be a constant thorn in your side, however Midnight Club's LA seems to exist in a world or nearly perpetual darkness and clear skys, so you'll rarely have to travel through the rush hour traffic.

Weather effects enhance the LA atmosphere

Although the city is great, navigating it while in a race is beyond frustrating. Arrows appear as markers on each waypoint but they'll often appear at inconievenient places, espically when you're near a highway and it isn't always obvious if you should be getting on, or off. Even when you do follow these arrows the odds are stacked against you, the computer knows best and will often take the shortest route from A-B, leaving you following the long way around like a chump. This problem may seem minor, but since the solution is to simply have a minimap with a line on it, the issue is just senseless. Blundering your way around the city does get easier as you learn the routes and learning will come quick when it seems you're just competing in the same races over and over, because often you are. The reson you're playing this same mission again is because your opponent is a heartless racing machine with the reactions and movement of an over caffeinated hamster.

The city detail is great

One of the best ways to aid victory is to be driving the best car in your class so your not constantly eating the dust of your rivals, but your choices aren't particularly vast. There's 43 cars and 3 bikes available to you, which if you've been keeping score you'll find that number is nearly 30 less than the previous game. Fortunately Ford and Mazda have now been added to the lineup so even with less cars, there is at least more variation of manufactures. Both cars and bikes can be upgraded with new parts, or have their appearance modified with cosmetic changes, paint jobs and vinyls, true to the sprit of Midnight Club these visual changes can be used for great evil, turning a classy car into a two toned, neon eyesores with a spoiler like a shopping trolley. Cars can also be outfitted with power-ups like EMP pulses or the ability to slow down time and while these aren't 'mostly' overpowered, hitting an enemy just right with aggro and knocking them down the wrong street will take them some time to recover.

The evils or car customization

There's a fair selection of different activities to be done; you can deliver cars but this essentially is just a time trial with a damage limit, then there's actual time trials, straight mana-a-mano races, tournaments and the rather treacherous pink slip races, amongst other things. Racing for pinks may not be something you're familiar with, but when you agree to a pink race both drivers put their cars on the line. Usually in a game you'd expect some kind of mulligan or at the very least to reach to the power switch, in Midnight Club trying any of these little tricks will forfeit your ride so you better be damn sure before you enter one of these races. The tension of the pink slip races is rather unique to a racing game, but with the punishing and often unfair challenge of the game you're perhaps better off not racing with your hottest ride, if you do then I fear for the safety of your game controllers when your luck runs out.

Bikes are fast buy risky

While your zooming around in the many races of the city you'll be progressing in a very simple story of your unnamed character who's moved to the west coast to make a name for himself, story is not in any way a focus here, but dealing with some of the characters you'll find can be unintentionally hilarious. Everyone you meet seems to be a walking Cliché from some background or another with accents as suspect as their dialog. Opponents will be taunting you about how far in front they are or how you're going to crash and they're going to overtake you, it's a very campy bad boy racer attitude that I personally find rather amusing but this style may irritate others. To drown out the dialog you can always turn up one of the 68 available radio tracks, I'd of hoped that in such a large list that I'd at least of heard of ONE of them but at least the selection is well suited to the attitude of the game.

The police aren't much of a problem

Sadly I didn't get much of a chance with multiplayer since everyone seems to be off playing one of the high profile Q4 releases, although there were enough people around to get together a game of keep away, where you simply have to hold onto a flag for as long as possible. Multiplayer seems functional and the power-ups make things a little interesting but there's not a whole lot of draw here compared to some other racers. There's is also an online mode called "Rate my ride" in which you can rate the cars of other random players and purchase them for a fixed price from their garage (if they allow), once again this is nothing revolutionary but you do get to see the bad cars others have created or purchase some sweet vinyls. Many of your antics are recorded online in the Rockstar social club along with your GTA4 stats (http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/) I'm all for any features that allow me to get involved in tracking my friends or see how many cars I've destroyed (16) but by far it's biggest bonus for me is the ability to quickly get screenshots for reviews such as this, if only all games were as generous

Smile for the Internets

Midnight Club: Los Angeles has almost all the components of a great racer, being chased by the police through LA in my little Ford Focus has a lot of potential fun, but there's the problem. Midnight club has a lot of potential, but it seems like the fun fairy skipped over Rockstar San Diego this year. Tedious races, a clumsy map and an unforgiving difficulty brings the game down hard, and a game without fun is just an interesting diversion at best.

3/5