Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the latest addition to the Midnight Club series in Rockstar's library. As the title states, the game is set in the streets of Los Angeles, giving you a new area to tear up.
Rockstar have never been shy with the games they bring out, with the Midnight Club series spanning way back from late 2000, there has been a lot of time for improvement in just about every area. Rockstar had previously helped in the making of Midtown Madness prior to their launch of Midnight Club: Street Racing, which gave them a good forefront in the racing genre to really give their title a punch to the genre. Since then, spanning two sequels before the latest in the series, a lot of improvements have come to the series, like being able to customise just about everything on your car from wheel trims to spoilers to body kits. Midnight Club 2 saw the release of Motorcycles into the mix of the mayhem, which has followed suite in the series every since, being the first racing game to match bikes off against cars.
A few new perks they've added to the latest iteration in their series are dynamic weather and practically no menus anywhere in the game. The dynamic weather is something you don't often see actually having any affect on the performance of the car, but usually only to the visibility in games. This time around, the weather changes how the car will perform. If it is raining, the roads will become wet, which means that brakes will have less traction on them, yet not enough to end up becoming something so tedious it will make you stop playing. Midnight Club Los Angeles also brings a 24 hour day/night cycle into effect, where the real world time affects the time of day in the game, meaning if you play in the morning, it will be light, but if you play at night, you race in the dark. This feature also adds another into the mix, with different amounts of traffic appearing throughout different times of day.
In Midnight Club 3, you used to have to follow your opponent to the starting line, however, now you have to RACE them. A new concept put In by Rockstar who weren’t happy with the way it was, decided to change it around, giving you more freedom. You no longer have to follow the other racer to the start, you can take any path you like to reach it, which is a nice idea because you no longer have to wait for the other car to sort itself out after crashing into traffic.
With Midnight Club: Los Angeles, every race counts for something. Every race you complete, whether it’s in career, arcade or online, you will be rewarded with points. These points progress you through the game while unlocking things like vehicles, as well as performance and visual customisations for your rides. The amount of reputation points you earn is entirely down to you. Racers in the city are represented with coloured icons on your GPS, which indicate the difficulty of that particular race.
Online play has been with the series since the second title, but in this current genre with just about every current generation console owner playing online, this is when the series really gets its chance to prove something. You will be able to do all the career mode races while playing online, as well as an amount of battle modes, such as capture the flag. Online play isn’t just about racing here though, the free roaming around the city has proven very popular in the series with just a group of friends messing about and doing a few fun races to areas of the city. This time around though, a ‘race editor’ has been incorporated. With the race editor, it allows you to create your own races while playing with others, giving everyone in the current session the option to take part or not, with everyone still being in the same game session. If you choose to take part in the race, you are taken to the starting line, otherwise if you decline you’re left to carry on roaming.
The graphics this time around look like a giant step up from the previous title. Back when Midnight Club 3: DUB was released in 2005 I thought the graphics were pretty impressive. Now with the current technology used in consoles, they’ve really been able to step up to the playing field and push to get something that looks truly stunning. Rockstar worked hard on each title, improving their styles of realism of not only the cars, but the city itself. Now, with Los Angeles, they’ve got the chance to shine above all their previous titles, along with other free roaming racing game series like Need For Speed.
Although there is little media out at the minute of Midnight Club: Los Angeles, from what I’ve seen and from different resources I’ve read, this game is shaping up to be something quite spectacular. With Racing not being the most favoured genre of my personal taste, even I’m looking forward to seeing more from this game to see what it’s capable of. With little competition on the market at the minute, the only real competition it really needs to worry about is Burnout Paradise.