|
Wednesday, November 12, 2008 |
 |
Midnight Club Los Angeles
By Lard @ 7:31 PM :: 1499 Views ::  :: PS3
|
 |
Midnight Club is a racing game that tends to veer towards the “street racing” genre along the lines of “Fast and the Furious” and that sort of style. It features a story about an up and coming racer looking to get into the “scene” or something along those lines; it’s pretty much superfluous and completely generic.
That said, Rockstar has made a fantastic looking game. The city is really vast in scope and incredibly detailed. It will take ages for a player to get to know the layout of the city instinctually and even longer to find all the shortcuts. Rockstar has done an amazing job at recapturing Los Angeles and making it feel like a real city. The GPS system in your car is going to become your lifeline in the game.
That brings us to the car, and steering it. If there’s one general beef I have with racing games for the PS3, it’s that they seem determined to screw up a perfectly good control system that’s worked fine for the last two systems. Motorstorm screwed it up, Pure screwed it up and Midnight Club LA screwed it up. In Midnight Club’s case, instead of using the X button to accelerate, you use the right analog stick, while using the left to steer. Trying to control the car with this layout feels awkward and sloppy, and just not very well thought out.
You instigate the races while controlling the car, by coming up to someone and flashing your headlights. This will start a race, and while you’re often street racing, there are several different types of races in the game, with things like delivery missions to break up the monotony. This brings me to my next complaint.
The AI is just too damn hard to beat. It doesn’t seem to matter what vehicle you have, the AI is just better than you. On top of that, the AI is also apparently impervious to oncoming traffic, which you are not. The tutorial levels aren’t representative of the rest of the game, which is bloody hard, and you will find yourself doing the same races over and over again.
For those that are interested, there is quite a bit of customization available in the game for your cars. You can tune/change/modify just about everything your heart desires but it seems like a trivial add-on to make up for the larger faults of the game.
As far as the sound, there isn’t much at all you’ll want to listen to over again, if at all. The music is largely a mix of generic hip hop and generic alt rock. Nothing is particularly memorable. The voice acting is fine for what it is, and all the actors sound “gangsta” enough for their parts.
I suppose I sound like I’m being overtly critical of Midnight Club, but overall the game just lacked the fun I was looking for in a racing game. As a big fan of racing games as a whole, I’ve been distinctly unimpressed with the racing games offered this gen. I had high hopes for Midnight Club but was sorely disappointed. The awkward controls combined with brutal AI just made for an unenjoyable, albeit great looking game.
7 out of 10
|
|
|
|
|