Review: Midnight Club: Los Angeles

Midnight Club: LA uses the concept of an open world for you to drive around in and find others racers to take on. An open world means that you have an entire city to drive through, and the races that you take part in are set up in certain areas/streets of the city. For example, this same concept is found in games like Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed Most Wanted. This game requires you to open your map and select your next opponent, and then drive to find them. At times, you will be able to race your opponent to the start line which adds a bit more to the experience. This game doesn’t really require an open world setting; the style of venue doesn’t really add much to the game. The city doesn’t have many notable landmarks, so you won’t be able to remember how the city is laid out. What makes it weirder is that even though it’s an open world, during the races you still have check points to meet. So you can’t find your own way to the finish line. But you can still drive off the path, which can cause you to fall far behind and adds to the game's difficulty.

The gameplay in Midnight Club: LA also is feels off. Because it isn’t a simulation racer (a style of driving game where the car’s mechanics replicate driving a car in real life), it focuses on the concept of “hold down the accelerator and dodge obstacles.” This kind of gameplay is found in the Need for Speed and Burnout franchise, but the game's design falters with this control style because it focuses on it way too much. In most games with this style of racing, the brake button is still needed during some sharp turns or to help avoid an obstacle. Unlike those types of games, Midnight Club: LA doesn’t use the brake button at all. In fact, using it will cause you to slow down so much at a turn that your opponent(s) will easily be able to pull ahead. You'll end up having to always worry about whether you are going too fast when reaching a turn, and hoping you have enough room between you and the guy behind you  so that you can use the brake. Not being able to use the brake button whenever it's needed can make driving in between cars and taking sharp turns very difficult.

On the other hand, the game awards you with new “Special Abilities” the more you advance through the game. These can be anything from slowing down time so you can manoeuvre better for a few seconds, or even causing an opponent to break down for a bit. These help out quite a bit during a race; slowing down time when you realise you need to make a sharp turn immediately can really save your race. The addition of these abilities are helpful and fun to use, and ease the pressure of the game's difficulty. They allow for more thought and strategy to be used in the race and give you more diversity in the way you handle the tracks.

This brings us to the difficulty of the game, which as I mentioned, is very high. With a lot of racing games, not having a super clean run can cost you the race. This is also the case with Midnight Club: LA. What makes this even worse is that the opponents will hardly ever crash into anything or overshoot a turn. Your opponent(s) always know exactly how fast they should be going and the best route to the finish. You'll always need to be on your toes. No matter how far back your opponent is, one wrong turn or collision can still cost you first place. The classic slingshot handicap opponents.

To add to the difficulty, they set you up with four different levels of challenge to play. Green is easiest, yellow is medium, orange is hard, and red is hardest. For the majority of the time I spent with the game, I was playing either green or a few yellow runs. Green became quite easy for me once I upgraded my car as much as I could, but I was still only winning by a few short seconds. Yellow was the level I had to play at to have a challenge and yet still have some chance of winning. Normally you’d be able to keep replaying the races so you can memorize some of the hard sections and practise them – not in this game. Each time you do the race again, after losing, it changes the track. You’re still doing the same race, but now you’re driving through a different setup. This makes any chance of trying to practise in the areas you screwed up at impossible and, once again, greatly increases the game’s difficulty. Not being able to memorize key turns and the layout of the race tracks really annoyed me.

If you do get tired of the computer players, you can take your driving online. The game allows for up to sixteen players racing at once with various game modes. Besides the standard racing modes you can play types such as Keep Away, the player must hold onto a flag for as long as they can, as well as Stockpile, the player must collect as many flags as they can. The online gameplay also adds a couple more special abilities for you to use against your opponents.

One of the nicest things about Midnight Club: LA is the graphics and the way it presents itself. Everything looks really slick and shiny wherever you go. The car crashes aren’t as good as what we’ve seen in games like Motorstorm or Burnout Paradise though, since your car will never go as far as to blow up. However, it does a good job of making your car look like trash if you get banged up enough. The city of Los Angeles, in which you play, also looks great and has a day and night cycle. The city’s weather can even change from sunny to cloudy to even start to rain on you while you race. So you will never have to race in only one type of setting/weather pattern.

The music in Midnight Club: LA is also cool and diverse. You can select different genres in which to play depending on your music taste. The best part about the music in the game is that it allows you to make a Favourites Playlist,  letting you specifically choose which songs you like the most or want to listen to more often. The inclusion of this feature is great, since listening to music you can’t stand and getting frustrated at the game are not a good combination.

Overall, Midnight Club: LA is a very nice looking game that just gets frustrating after a short while of playing. The gameplay and difficulty make it a really hard to stick with. However, if you can get past the tedious gameplay introduction, it fixes some of these issues when you start getting the better cars and superior tune ups. The game presents itself very nicely and can get extremely fun when racing online. but it doesn’t bring anything new to the genre or doesn’t stand out as a better racing game against some of the current contenders on the market. It does a good job of looking sharp, but can be hard to get into. If you really want the best racing experience, you’ll  probably want to look elsewhere.

Verdict: Rent It