Midnight Club LA

[weemadando]

I concur with the reviews. It looks great, it plays great, the customisation is good. It combines the best aspects of the old Midnight Club and Burnout Paradise.

But that shit is HARD.

Punishingly, unbelievably, painfully, brutally hard. The AI rarely makes a mistake, yet (much like in Burnout) you'll find yourself squinting at the screen going: "is that curb mountable or -" SMASH. And then you lose the race, because you hit something that you lost in amongst the clutter of details.

Also, the headlights are fucking anaemic, meaning that racing at night becomes a game of blind-mans-bluff played at 150mph and usually ending within sight of the finish line because you hit something you couldn't see. If you could put your high-beams on by a method OTHER than holding down the button, that'd be great.

That said, I can see myself becoming hooked on this like previously Midnight Club games.

Oh yeah, and don't mess with the po-lice. Because they will catch you, they will arrest you, and your goddamn bail DOES put your cash into the negatives. And that fucking sucks.

[Stark]

Nothing about this game even piques my interest. I don't even fully understand what niche it's going for, since it's got such story elements. Sell it to me. Chardz can make Saints 2 sound like a laugh!

[weemadando]

Saints 2 is also on my to-get list, along with Fable 2, Far Cry and BiA. Midnight Club was just filling the gap that I was feeling at the moment...

And the story? It amounts to: "Hey, I'm the new guy in town, where can I race?"

Then you drive around town, starting races with people cruising about from Stoplights, either going through checkpoints, or Burnout Paradise style: "race to X landmark" stuff.

I just want to unlock some of the powers. Because that's what always made Midnight Club so fun. My car ROARS and all of yours get thrown off the road.

[weemadando]

A few pro-tips for those in the business of making racing games.

1) Don't make cars/parts locked by "reputation". Because you can be damn sure that if I walk into a care dealership with $40k in cash wanting to buy a new car, they aren't going to turn me away because I haven't won enough illegal street races yet. No, that isn't how it works. Let me buy what I goddamn well want based on how much cash I've earnt.

2) Please, please, please - let me see where I'm going. I don't know what the fuck is up with all these new-fangled "low-angle" cameras, but they suck. I want to be able to see over my car so I know what's in that 100m long blindspot infront of me.

2a) In addition to letting me see infront of my fucking car, can you please have headlights that work. I understand that your engine might have limitations, but if my headlights only illuminate the landscape AND NOT OTHER FUCKING CARS then there's probably something there you need to address. Because, you know, those other cars are still a serious fucking collision hazard. Yes, the headlights do illuminate cars, but not NEARLY to the same measure as they do the environment, meaning that having a truck suddenly materialise out of hte night infront of you is a really genuine threat.

3) Please make the AI fallible. At least there isn't blatant rubber-banding in this game, but the AI just does not seem to make mistakes, they don't miss the lines, they rarely get into accidents with traffic and the police don't seem to bother them much. Also, Rockstar San Diego seem to have taken some inspiration from their sister studio and had the other racers cars be about 100x heftier than yours, meaning that any attempt to run them off the road, Pitt-maneouvre them or any other nasty tricks leads to you UTTERLY FAILING at these and often getting "locked" onto the other car, which seems to be free to maneouvre at will, driving you mercilessly into obstacles.

4) Why don't people like my ride? What's wrong with a Candy-Apple Red '69 Camaro, with the side-exhausts and a great big supercharger poking out of the bonnet?

[Flash]

Maybe it's just me, but all the Midnight Club games have sucked like shit, and from your description, it doesn't sound like LA is changing this.

Any racing game that restricts your access to perfectly legal car parts based on either some score, or how far through the story you are (i'm looking at you too NFS series) has an automatic black mark against it. This is made worse when you have to use your in game winnings to purchase them - they're already restricted by price, so the devs are just being assholes.

As for your criticism of its difficulty - well, from memory the MC games have always been ridiculously hard. And it's been hard for the reasons you mention - AI that cheats, and dodgy collision detection. As an arcade racer, not a simulation, I SHOULDN'T lose a race because I hit a stop sign, or mounted the curb causing my car to EXPLODE. Frankly, any game that allows cars to do 500 meter long superjumps, but won't let you pit another car without dying can fuck off.

I'll stick to Burnout Paradise. For all it's little niggling flaws, it does so much RIGHT. That reminds me - gotta break some road rules tonight.

[weemadando]

I was a super-whore for Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition: Remix. And I was having a craving for some stupid racing so went with Midnight Club: LA. I am quite enjoying it, but it lacks the pure, unrestrained joy of no. 3.