Midnight Club: Los Angeles
Escape from L.A.
Tags: Midnight Club: Los Angeles Categories: Reviews, Xbox 360 Reviews
Posted by Mark "MadMup" Zwolanek on Nov 25th, 2008
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Midnight Club: Los Angeles (title page) | 1 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Racing | No | ||
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As the movie L. A. Story taught us, there are plenty of reasons to visit L.A. – beautiful weather, art museums, palm trees, Sarah Jessica Parker… When Steve Martin wrote the movie celebrating/satirizing the city, he must have forgotten the part about the illegal street racing that takes place all day every day on every street in every section. Strange he’d forget something so prevalent. No matter, since Midnight Club: Los Angeles has picked up his slack, focusing strictly on this feature.
The protagonist arrives in town looking to get busy racing. He’s able to quickly find some people to help him reach that goal, buys a cheap car and gets to it. Before long, he’s meeting more people, entering more races, and doing odd jobs to earn more money.
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Midnight Club: Los Angeles is all about the street racing. Every race is a way to earn more rep, more money, and more cars. Driving takes place in a dynamic environment, a huge recreation of L.A. with changes in time and weather, which both affect the driving. The traffic system is ever-changing, too, with some areas being more heavily used and other areas having different use depending on the time of day. What might contain traffic impossible to weave through at nine in the morning might be empty at 11 at night.
There are several different types of races – ordered checkpoint, lap, all the standard types found in most races – but the most interesting races are the landmark races. Racers try to get to a certain point first, but there isn’t a specific pathway marked. It’s up to each racer to find his way. It’s been done before, certainly, but it’s a natural addition to a street-racing game, and it’s a highlight.
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Online options are varied, including capture the flag modes right alongside create-a-track modes and regular flat-out racing. The change from offline racing to online racing is seamless and takes less than a minute in most cases. Load times overall are nearly unnoticeable, and it helps keep the feel of a vibrant, alive city.
There are police in the game, and if you drive recklessly in their presence, they will be on your tail. Some of the most fun in the game can be had by trying to lose them at breakneck speeds and listening to their radio chatter about how to stop you.
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The game is marred by a couple of things. First, the story mode is, well, worthless. The characters have been cut out of some standard 2 Fast 2 Furious scrapbook and all talk like someone’s idea of what “street” is. The game would actually be improved without any story mode at all. All of the rep-earning that opens up new parts, vehicles, and races could certainly be handled some other way or something. Anything would be better than the blather that cuts into the racing.
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But the racing itself is a problem, too. While it’s frustrating to run into cross traffic and come to a dead stop, it’s even more frustrating to know that AI-controlled cars never seem to have that problem, nor are they ever far enough behind you that they can’t take advantage of your smallest slip-up and sprint past you and on into the distance, never to be seen again. Unfair AI is the cheapest way to make a racing game difficult, and no amount of beautiful scenery or lack of load times can make it any more palatable.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Virtually no load times + Huge environment to race in + Online racing seamlessly grows out of offline modes |
8.3 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Cardboard characterization - Ridiculously difficult AI |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Seriously - get the police to chase you. But not in real life, kids! Stay in school! | |
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Tags: Midnight Club: Los Angeles
Posted by Mark "MadMup" Zwolanek on Nov 25th, 2008 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox 360 Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
