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

          

Fallout 3 Review

When a game is released with the Fallout name in the title it brings with it a certain level of expectation, now finally after 10 years we have the chance to see if Bethesda has cooked up something worth the wait.

For those that cannot remember, or simply weren't gaming when Interplay began the series in the late 90's you can rest easy that Fallout 3 doesn't require any prior knowledge, but as a bonus, let me fill you in a little back-story to save you checking the World Wide Wikipedia. Fallout 3 is set in the Post apocalyptic wasteland of the United States, specifically around the Washington DC area. The events that lead to the fall of mankind began after the world nations started squabbling over the remaining resources left on the planet, finally an unnamed country went nuclear in 2077 causing many people to retreat into underground vaults while others perished or mutated on the surface. Fallout 3 begins in 2258 with your birth not far away from downtown Washington DC.

Don't get too used to the cleanliness of these vaults

Previous Fallout games have been all viewed from the isometric perspective, naturally Bethesda has taken the series into 3D with the same Gamebryo engine seen in Oblivion. This caused many people to scream "It's just going to be Oblivion with guns!" which on the surface seems quite accurate as it's quickly apparent that Fallout 3 and Oblivion share many commonalities along with the shared graphics engine. Oblivion with guns may not be a bad thing though, depending on where you stand, and if there's one things that video games teach us, is that guns are cool. You'll have your first brief taste of combat before you leave the vault, this will give you change to try the new combat system that separates Fallout 3 from Oblivion and indeed any first person game that's come before it (at least in my memory), V.A.T.S. (Vault-Tech Assisted Targeting System).

The V.A.T.S. targeting mode

A quick tap of the V key on your keyboard and the game will pause and take you into a targeting mode so you can plan your attack so long as you have the necessary action points. This doesn't replace your ability to just point your gun at your target and pull the trigger but since combat is all variables and calculations, real-time combat doesn't feel particularly great. Once you select your targets in V.A.T.S. you'll not able to move until your sequence is complete, this seems a little off putting at first should you realize your tactics are woefully inadequate, but when combat slows down to show your perfect head-shot connect with the back of a mercenary's head, the troubles of the wasteland quickly fade away. The V.A.T.S combat doesn't get old as quickly as you'd expect, however it can be frustrating to unload 3 shotgun blasts to the back of someone's head just for them to turn around and fire back, as this can make the weapons feel underpowered one moment and devastating the next, but since we're talking about an RPG here and not a first person shooter these 'problems' are to be expected. There's no shortage of variety; plasma weapons, mini guns, sledge hammers, buzz blades and sniper rifles are just some of the joyous weapons you'll scavenge and having a lot of variety helps when you're struggling to keep your weapons filled with ammo.

The V.A.T.S. effect!

Your weapon accuracy is governed by six of the thirteen available skills, the others are the usual affair of healing, sneaking, bartering etc. and as with previous Fallout  games these skills are just part of the statistics that control your character. The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck) returns and should feel pretty familiar to anyone who's got any past RPG experience, the perks system however is a little unique. These perks include the traits of previous Fallouts so naturally you'll have access to the "bloody mess" perk, which causes "characters and creatures you kill [to] often explode into a red, gut-ridden, eyeball-strewn paste". Some perks, including bloody mess give you a skill bonus, others may change the gamely slight by allowing you to feast on your victims or befriend some of the wasteland creatures. The character advancement system feels very true to the Fallout universe and the Bethesda designers thankfully resisted the temptation to include their Elder Scrolls system of advancing only the skills you use. Fallout 3 also has a great many reasons to play through a second or third time, one of those reasons is that your different skills will open up new paths through the game, perhaps you can talk yourself out of a situation rather than fighting, plus having higher skills in certain areas will unlock different traits for you to choose from.

Try to get through the game without your pants exploding

It's not just your skills that create new paths through Fallout, your actions can also drastically effect the wasteland which will in turn effect the reaction of other characters towards you. It seems as if no RPG is complete without the player going through a slew of ethical choices, but Fallout 3 gives you some rather large choices early on that can change things so much that you'll feel that you've missed out on a large portion of the game no matter how you choose to go. Dialog trees fortunately feel a little more fleshed out than Oblivion and although combat is often the showpiece of Fallout 3, you're going to spend a fair amount of time talking to the rather wacky gals and fellahs in the wasteland. Conversations and missions often go beyond the usual fetch and assassinate quests and sometimes you can adjust the lives of others by talking to a few people without any quest being attached and no rewards given, besides perhaps a little karma. Most of the people you'll meet feel very three dimensional, with very separate personalities as if they'd each have their own back story to tell. The believability of these characters is only helped by the rather disturbing feeling of accuracy you'll get from the wasteland you're crossing.

No quest to replace the broken humor chip unfortunately

It's a rather unique feeling when you find an untouched house out in the wasteland, you enter the house and see a suitcase by the door next to some human remains, more remains are in the kitchen next to the food in the oven, traveling upstairs you see a bedroom with toy cars on the floor and a doll in the toy box, there are more human remains on the bed. These simple touches created more emotion for me than any other recent game in memory, so it feels rather creepy when you're rummaging around the belongings of this deceased family so you can find some items to sell to a trader. Sadly though, Fallout 3 suffers from the item packing as the Elder Scrolls series, although not as severe, often you'll find that the world seems to be overly flooded with filler objects, but the areas are arranged and objects placed with such meticulous detail that it's easy to forgive a little time saving. So you may find objects at least in locations that you'd expect, but you have to wonder how many people eat squirrel pie and only drink one brand of soda. Fallout 3 has some big shoes to fill and it has tried hard to grant good fan service, with a couple of returning characters (even 100 years after Fallout 1) and the amazing way that Fallout 3 manages to nail the feeling of the first Fallout games, while also feeling completely new. You're not going to see the crazy pop culture references you found in the second game however, as the humor here feels more mature and tries not to break the atmosphere of the experience, even the hacking mini-games aren't some Pipemania puzzle that breaks the atmosphere every time you activate a computer. The atmosphere is deepened even more so by tuning your Pip-Boy 3000 radio to a station and checking out the news, where you'll likely hear about your adventures from Three Dog, who's one of the larger than life personalitys in the game who you'll get the chance to visit.

 
Cities look like they are barely standing

There's no shortage of places to go in Fallout 3 to meet these unique individuals; underground tunnels, museums, supermarkets or cities are all great places to meet, greet or kill depending on your disposition. However there's a fundamental problem with exploring the landscape of Fallout 3, it's a wasteland. Fortunately Bethesda have done a great job of giving the feeling of a wasteland without actually having you go too far before you encounter something of interest. Quick travel also takes the potential repetitive travel away, however the repetitive nature of the locations isn't something that can be solved so easily. Oblivion, Morrowind, Daggerfall, all allowed Bethesda to get creative and build wondrous beautiful structures, however when you're designing a post apocalyptic wasteland, your hands are rather tied. Most buildings are the same shade of gray, held together with battered stone or with whatever scrap has been found. Clearly though a lot has been done to stretch the limits of variety without going too far and it should be applauded.

Your first view of the Wasteland is a memorable one

Although Fallout 3 has a whole lot going for it, re-playability, moody atmosphere, detailed environments and great voice acting for every line of dialog, the engine does set it back a little. While the visuals have been improved drastically over Oblivion, such as the detail on faces, many people you meet all look rather the same facially, but fortunately Fallout 3 does include one of the most robust mustache selection systems to date. Other issues also revolve around the engine, such as terribly jerky and unnatural animations, the occasional failure for scripted events to activate, or an NPC becoming stuck behind an object while their cut-scene plays, forcing you to wait while they navigate their way around like a drunken Roomba. Of course getting stuck doesn't just effect the NPCs, a couple of wrong jumps and you can find yourself stuck someplace without hope of freedom so you'll once again be reaching for the quick load. Quick save and quick load will your new best friends before long and the over anxious amongst you might find themselves hitting quick save before every corner. Most of these problems fortunately are just nit-picks, like the fact that you can loot a corpse just by finding a fragment of remains and the fact that the inventory system is still as clunky as Oblivion, perhaps more so since you can no longer sort items.

Some melee sequences would fit well into Manhunt 2

The problems with Fallout 3 are rather minor, however it is frustrating that some of the issues that effected the 2006 game of the year haven't been rectified. If you can look past these foibles then you'll find a truthful sequel to a great classic series that has many great qualities and can provide more than its money worth in game play hours. Hey, at least we didn't just get a multi player only cross-platform shooter *ahem*. It's easy to recommend Fallout 3 as long as you're not expecting a fast paced FPS, anyone else with some PRG experience should bunker down with Fallout 3 and prepare for the apocalypse.

5/5

Saints Row 2 Review

Saints Row received a lot of success as the first open world game for this current generation of consoles, now, two years later we get to see how its sequel stands up in a post GTA4 world.

Let me get something out of the way nice and early, comparing Saints Row 2 to GTA is a lot like putting Need for speed next to Gran Tourismo; both are fine games and provide very different experiences within their respective genres. That said, there's many possible comparisons I'm could to make, not just to show how saints is the same, but to show how the two differ.

As I mentioned before, Saints 2 is an open world game, it has the usual drill of side missions, gangs, guns and carjacking. However, as games like GTA 4 are being increasingly serious and straight laced, Saints Row 2 takes a "why so serious" approach, far away from GTA's moral choices and instead the protagonist is downright brutal, but more on that later. The story's layout won't surprise you if you've played the first Saints, the story continues from the previous game and has the same kind of structure, complete a few missions at the start of the game, then the story branches out in three different directions and comes together at the end with some final missions, while you're forced to take side missions along the way to earn enough respect to continue the campaign. The main story has many issues, both technically and creatively; You'll occasionally have to restart a mission because a target simply isn't there, or you'll walk through a door just to die instantly when many enemies instantly spawn through the doorway. One campaign has you dealing with drugs has few memorable moments, others however do have a few hidden surprises and the voice of Michael Dorn is always welcome to anyone who watched the I Am Weasel cartoon, or perhaps the lesson known StarTrek:TNG (Worf), although most of the other voice work and lip syncing is shaky to say the least. The varying quality of the missions is only equaled by the seemingly random difficulty, one mission may set its self up to be an epic battle just to have break down to be a cakewalk, another seemingly insignificant task may end up challenging your patience as much as your skill.

It's safe to say the physics are rather exaggerated

The main story might not be where you spend most of your time in the city of Stillwater, with at least 20 types of side missions to be getting along with, most of which came from the first game, but with a few surprises:

• Streaking: Remove your clothes and run around in front of pedestrians
• Septic Avenger: Drive around in a septic truck and cover buildings with poop
• Fuzz: Stop crime in excessive ways, such as halting the activities of skateboarders with satchel charges
• Fight club

These activities, while mostly fun, can also be the most frustrating part of the game. Rather often they can be just based on the luck of the draw, as the location of any one mission will vary each time you try it and some locations are easier to complete your given objective than others. Although you are required to complete a certain amount of side missions before you can go on in the main quest you'll still want to play these side missions, not only can some of them be a lot of fun or just over the top extreme, but the rewards are great, sometimes perhaps game-breakingly great. Some rewards will simply be a store discount or a new car, for some missions you'll unlock unlimited ammo for a specific type of gun and having the ability to shoot dual SMGs without worry of ammo can make you feel like you're cheating your way through the game. Some of the more amusing un-lockables give you new outfits, such as a traffic cone hat which you'll see your character happily wearing even through the darkest and most twisted cut scenes.

Pick a larger vehicle and you choose how to get to your destination

Dressing your character and gang up as a ninjas or parading around as a giant killer hotdog is only one way of amusing yourself, as the actual character creation can really provide an unhealthy amount of joy. How about making a burly woman with a beard and cockney male voice who swings her hips as she walks, or creating a dude with a heaving chest that talks like a black woman. Personally my favorite character was a skinny white guy with glasses that has a crazy look on his face and a pimp walk. It sounds simply like a fun diversion, but I had tears down my face looking at the freaks of nature I'd created and fortunately for a small fee you can go back and change everything again by just driving to a plastic surgeon.

Taking these characters into multiplayer highlights the wide variety of customization available and allows you to reenact a 12 player epic Pirate vs Ninja battle. The Strong arm multiplayer mode is a team based battle where each team competes at the varying activities around the map, while you still have the option to just gun down the competition, you can also spray tag certain walls around the map to grant your tam bonuses or to hinder the other team. This makes for a pretty unique experience beyond the usual deathmatch mode which is included but is in no way memorable. One more than memorable option is the ability to play every mission and side mission co-op with a buddy over XBL. The co-op works exactly as expected and opens up some very intrusting ways of doing some of the missions. Even with just two players you can make even the dullest missions far more interesting and the crazy missions even more ridiculous.

Backing up a bud with a Tornado Attack Helicopter can be very effective

I've mentioned times before about the insanity of the game, but let me give you an example; okay, you need to teach a lesson to a rival do you:
A, Place a prank call?
B, Knock on his door and run away?
C, Buy a geiger counter, take a boat to an island with a power plant, user the geiger counter to locate and collect radioactive waste, escape by helicopter, get shot down, steal a car and drive to his local tattooist, sabotaging the procedure he's planning on having performed?
If you picked 'C' then congratulations! You'll fit will into the world of Saints Row 2 and the brutal sadism of the protagonist. You also should probably get yourself checked.

Some effects look nice, but it can look like a hi-res PS2 game

A quick look comparing Saints Row 2 and GTA 4 will reveal that Saints appears to be a budget game in comparison, and indeed you'll have that impression throughout. There's very little polish, graphics haven't evolved and it all feels like a hodgepodge of ideas thrown into a package. Bugs are rampant, the old trick of jumping on a car and materializing inside still exists, sometimes when trying to jack a police cruiser you'll get in the back and if you look away from a car for just an instant it may vanish. The frustration of these faults can get on top of you, but fortunately there's so much to do that you can always come back to what's troubling you and these foibles are easy to forget when you're having so much fun being involved in the circus of Stillwater.

5/5