Street Racers Wanted: Meet @ Midnight

By Jay Williams

Can I get a woop woop? That's right party people, the latest game in the Midnight Club series "Los Angeles", is best described as pimped. Or 26-inches of chromed out-pimp. Or pimper sneak snizz.

Rockstar (better known for the Grand Theft Auto series) has recreated the entire city of Los Angeles in high resolution 3D.

With this latest creation Midnight Club L.A. has squarely put itself in the same league of EA's popular Burnout series and the ever-mentionable Need For Speed.

But there is a question that I aim to answer on this web page: is Midnight Club L.A. the best tuner game around? 

Well, I can't answer that in one sentence, but it sure comes close. 

Midnight Club Los Angeles makes its debut on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and has a fair crack at becoming numero uno.

It has a great attention to detail on the streets and environments, the vehicle rendering is very nice and the break-neck fast-paced racing action as you tear through the streets, parking lots, and back alleys on your quest to gaining 'Rep' points (which are essential to your career progression) is a lot of fun. 

Now, while the game isn't an exact clone of the city of L.A. (simply because the whole city would take for ever to create and thus explore), most of the famous landmarks you would expect to see have been included.

And the gameworld is huge. Absolutely massive, and significantly larger than the maps of previous Midnight Club games.

Okay, in terms of racing this game is pretty good. It's got a massive gameworld within which races take place, but don't expect realistic physics (most walls and poles won't stop you if you collide with them); it's all about massive powerslides in this game.

The goal in this game is to win races, earn money, buy cars and bikes, pimp them out, and then earn Rep points which unlocks newer, better vehicles. Rinse and repeat for interactive joy.

There is a story in Midnight Club Los Angeles but it's crud and contributes nothing to the experience. You're a new racer to the L.A. scene. Who likes to race. Wow. 

Along the way you meet different characters, some of which will challenge you, but the story isn't really a huge part of this title. The game's main focus is on the racing and burning around in your car. Rarely are you taken away from the action. 

Once you complete a race the game is paused for a moment just to tell you what you've won then your straight back to it: no need to go to your garage unless your want to change your ride and even then load times are minimal and almost non-existent helping to keep you behind the wheel.

When you start the game the entire city is open for you to explore, but just cruising around is kind of pointless.

What you want to do is access the in-game GPS navigation system (which is almost flawless - big ups for Rockstar for that one) to find a race. 

When you hit 'up' on the D-pad the game's camera zooms straight up from your car and into a birds eye view of the entire city, which lets you find races, and when exiting this mode it does the opposite, flawlessly dropping from the sky back down to your ride again. It looks cool and adds to the game's fluidity.

The are a few different races available, like red light races, freeway, time trials, delivery missions and payback missions just to name a few. Success in these races will result in a nice pay day.

Races are marked and colour coded with green being the easiest races through to red being the hardest and these change depending on what ride you are in.

For instance if you are cruising around in a tricked-out Lamborghini Murcielago Roadster coming across a Golf R32 you are going to be pretty hard to beat, but in saying that the game does demand a certain amount of driver skill with some races being petty tough.

If you've never played a Midnight Club game before, the race tracks are part of the city and the structure of racing is made up with these big yellow smoke flares, which act as your checkpoints.

You don't have to drive directly through them to pass a checkpoint but they can be a pain to see at times, with some being hidden around corners instead of on the corner and this can be frustrating. 

However there is always your overhead map in the corner of your HUD to help you out, but most of the time you're driving so fast that taking your eyes off the road for a split second can result in stacking big time!

It'll take you a while to learn where everything is in the digital Los Angeles and one of the keys to winning races is finding and hitting shortcuts during races. 

There's also jumps on some of the race courses which add a little chili powder to the racing, and using nitrous boosts and drafting or slip streaming behind other cars can give you the edge as well. 

The way the vehicles handle and the general physics of cars (and bikes) aren't too shabby at all if you like arcade racers, and there's notable differences between the different types of the cars such as tuners, muscle, exotic and most definitely the sports bikes.

Hopping into a muscle car can be a boot load of a lot of fun as they're the biggest culprits of massive powerslides, but this also makes them one of the hardest types of car to master.

Like all good street racing games the police will try to slow you down, which adds an extra challenge during races. If you go speeding past the Jacks, which is almost always the case, you have one of three choices:

A) Drive on by and be pursued.

B) Pull over and pay the fine and be on your way.

C) Pull over wait until the cop gets out to give you your fine then hit the gas and speed off, in turn starting a huge chase!

Getting away from the cops can be difficult and while it's certainly fun you'll find yourself in chases more often than you'd like and after a while it can get a little annoying when all you want to do is win a race.

Is Midnight Club L.A. a difficult game? Well, it does demand a decent level of skill and I'm not going to lie to you - it's not a walk in the park.

The computer AI being insanely good and your foes are very quick. Believe me when I say you will restart some races until you get to know the course because much of the time you have to race perfectly to win.

Alternatively you can race smart buy using your special abilities. Ah yes, the special abilities... Use them well and reap the rewards of a hero! 

These special abilities add an extra dimension to racing and are a nice change from the likes of the Need For Speed and Burnout games, and are unlocked when you reach certain 'Rep' levels after which they can be equipped. 

There are four to choose from:

Roar - sends out an engine rev so loud, traffic will do anything to get out of the way.

Zone - simulates the adrenaline rush of racing at insane speeds by slowing down the world around you to a crawl.

Agro - allows you to plough through the competition, swatting aside any car that gets in your way.

EMP - an Electro Magnetic Pulse that temporarily disables the competition, giving you the opportunity to fly by. It's probably the best ability in the game.

Some final thoughts: you can do burnouts and doughnuts but because of the game's arcadey physics, smoking up the tyres and trying to slide around on melting tyres is not as fun as it should be.

Also, the sound effects are poor. If I drive a customised V8 Ford Mustang, I would expect it to sound beefy and lumpy, but in the game it sounds like an electric scooter (but this disease afflicts all racing games).

It's good to have real cars and bikes in there too. The early games in the Midnight Club franchise used fake cars which was a bit cruddy.

The level of customisation is not bad, but there's only four settings for body kits and lights on the cars. You can change the interiors which is cool, and there is an in-car camera that lets you see the dashpad while racing which is a nice touch.

The arcade physics suit the game nicely, the city is nearly perfect and customising your ride is an aspect of the game that adds greatly to the game's lastability, but it should be noted that the tuning is not quite as good as the level of customising as in new Need For Speed games.

Graphically it's a very sharp-looking game with excellent attention to detail on the cars. The high frame rate also ensure that it feels fast. 

There's nothing worse than glancing at the speedometer at 200mph as the gameworld sluggishly crawls by. Oh, and you can't change the speedometer from miles per hour (MPH) which is not smart. It's dumb.

Midnight Club Los Angeles is a by-the-numbers racing experience that is extended in impressive style with the 16-player online modes. 

Game modes like Capture-the-flag and Stockpile are fun, and there's scope to create your own courses too. Add a handful of human players from around the world and the game's entertainment potential increases massively.

I haven't forgotten about the question either: is Midnight Club Los Angeles the best tuner game? In my opinion it's better than the Burnout games, but isn't quite as good as Need For Speed.

This game is a worthy contender for the title of best tuner game however, and is sure to have racing fans returning for another go. There's something to be said for driving exotic cars at insane speeds through the city, illegal street racing and car tuning. Something good!

Though Midnight Club Los Angeles is not Rockstar's best game, it's still a satisfying challenge.

If you're a car game junkie, you'll probably already own this game but if you're still pondering the purchase, I'd say give it a go (especially if you like online gaming). It's a ride pimping, car racing, cop chasing extravaganza.

Game: Midnight Club Los Angeles
System: Playstation 3
Players: 1-multi
Online: Yes
Developer: Rockstar
Distributor: Take 2 Interactive

Rating: 80%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)