Midnight Club: Los Angeles Review

[lnin0]

Just gave it a rent so after about five hours here are my early impressions.

Graphics and environment is every bit as beautiful and alive as you can imagine. It makes Burnout Paradise look last gen and Test Drive Unleashed look, well, frankly sad as hell.

Gameplay is pretty classic MC so if you come in expecting something else you are probably going to be disappointed. Cars feel solid and well grounded and each has a personality of its own but they are anything but realistic. Brakes...we don't need no stinkin' brakes.

The game isn't about power sliding around turns, the cars all have decent grip and sharp controls. It isn't so much about driving either, about hitting your mark and picking the perfect apex. The game, much like Burnout Paradise, is about speed. About twitch reflexes used to dodge objects that come at alarming speeds toward you.

Unlike Burnout Paradise it is far more forgiving of a game...something I was not expecting based on many of the reviews. For starters the world is not made up of varying shades of gray like BPs so it is much easier to navigate. Speaking of which, the map system and check points are also light years ahead of BPs. In addition it does not punish you for every little mistake - scrape a tree or pole and you will hardly notice. Unless you hit something dead to rights head on you will nary be delayed from your race.

Even when you do hit something you get a minor penalty as you spin wildly in circles and then typically end up facing close the direction you were headed and usually still rolling. I have also not had any controller throwing moments where you approach an intersection only to have the AI throw some traffic across it to take you out. It seems quite the opposite as the AI lets you race and when you hit something you know it was your fault and that you hit, and not just clipped it.

Now to the AI. There is no doubt it is rubberband of which I am not a fan. MC has always had this - some versions worse than others. As far as rubberband AI goes though, I think they did a pretty balanced job. It is not something they tried to hide or disguise - it is out there in the open and far from offensive. Yes, if you have a lead and crash you can expect to have someone right on your tail if not pass you. The same however works in your favor as well - crash and as long as it is not at the end of the race, you should be able to pull yourself back into it. It makes for some frantic racing that keeps you on the edge knowing that is it never over until it is over. For an arcade racer of this type it actually works.

The garage has some nice customization options but overall I am not feeling the 'performance' enhancements. Still, there are a ton of options and it really lets your personalize things.

Cops are a mixed bag. It just feels more ripped from GTA than the classic cop chase moments you got in the old NFS games. But then again, this is Rockstar so I guess my expectation were a bit off to begin with. Still, it never distracts from the overall game and helps build a little to the atmosphere.

Overall I don't know after I rent it for a week or two that it will be worth a buy but it has exceeded my expectations. There are moments racing on the freeway at night that give me a Tokyo Xtreme vibe (the grandfather of all 'tuner' games) and I love that but still it is no replacement. In the scope of MC I would say it is one of the best just edging out DUB and far better than any NFS to come down the pipe in years. Then again, maybe I just didn't get to the part everyone hates yet....

[spit_bubble]

This game friggin' sucks, and is not a racing game. It doesn't reward good driving and doesn't punish mistakes. It just uses rubberband AI to keep things close and artificially exciting.

Each race comes down to basically staying within the pack, trying your best not to crash near the end, and using slip streams and boosts to win in the last few moments.

One of my last races about midway through I crashed dead on into a walll, spun around facing the other direction, had trouble getting up and going again after getting caught within some cars, and yet in about five seconds I was right back within the thick of things.

A really poor game. What a waste, because the rest is so good... The environment, the soundtrack, the vehicle customization...

[lnin0]

To each his own. I don't think many arcade racers, past or present, can claim they are really about 'racing' in the traditional sense. They are twitch and dodge games dressed with car skins.

With this type of gameplay a human player is going to be bad at times, they will make mistakes - miss turns, hit a car etc. That is what it is about. It is about dodging things, not about braking points and precision apexes. Racing other mistake prone humans online is one thing. Racing AI is something all together different.

Consider that developers, all sorts of talented developers, are still trying to master AI that drives good. Good is predictable, Good is easily scalable, bad is not. If Rockstar did not injected artificial means to keep these races close this game would work for about 10% of the audience while the rest would find it either incredibly frustrating or incredibly easy or at times both.

Like I said above, coming in you know what to expect from Midnight Club. The formula is the same but I really think Rockstar did a nice job balancing the AI this time out. It will let the rubber band out ever so slightly and never does it snap back for no apparent reason. In that way it does punish mistakes and reward good driving, it is just that the comfort/frustration scale is smaller - like by the edge of a seat. And to me that works for this type of game.

Yes, I have barrel rolled my car coming to a complete stop on my roof mid race only to come back and win. I didn't come back in 5 seconds. The game did put me behind the eight ball and make me drive some clean sections but you always feel like you can get back in it without going to the 'restart' button over and over. Conversely the effect has worked against me seeing my don't get too comfort zone evaporate because of a last minute misstep. The thing is, at no point have I felt slighted - like the ref was just making a bunch of bad calls all my way - and that is why I say, in this case, rubber band AI works.