What on Earth is DUB?
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| Source // PlayStation |
The Midnight Club series of racing games blazed their way across the PlayStation 2 as early as 2000, but no matter what the street racing culture of the day looked and felt like, I just wasn't interested in goofy-looking cars with neon-lit skirts, hideous vinyl artwork, and rearview mirrors full of red and blue flashing lights.
Whether colourful or gritty, arcadey or simulation-centred, street racing wasn't my thing, and even after playing a couple for this 1001 list, the genre still isn't doing much for me. Will the next game of the series, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, out on new hardware, make me think again?
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| Source // PlayStation |
Fun Times
Getting straight into the plot - what little of it there seems to be - Midnight Club: Los Angeles sees you rock up to the city in search of a new ride. You're lying low for a while, for reasons unknown, but the urge to race is evidently coursing through your system, but all you have available are some old bangers that have seen better days.
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| Source // PlayStation |
Not pictured: Old bangers. I'm playing Midnight Club: Los Angeles on the PlayStation 3, which means no screenshots of my first dive into the game. Instead, I've got to rely on what the Internet has, and for a game that's on a must-play list, there isn't a whole lot out there.
Carefully selected bullshots like these are easy to find, but they absolutely do not give you a sense of what the game feels like.
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| Source // PlayStation |
I can use a shot like this to show how the default camera angle is a little skewed from the norm, functioning more like a film camera than a video game camera, but you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, really. Not unless you've played it yourself.
So I can continue to try and use my words to convey my view, a dot some irrelevant promo images here and there, or I can play the PlayStation Portable L.A. Remix, both a version 1.5 and version 0.5.
Make no mistake, I played Midnight Club: Los Angeles 'properly' as well, but for the sake of something sensible to look at, let's imagine these PSP screenshots are as polished as those promos.
At first, on the PS3, it was because the default driving controls use the right analogue stick for the accelerator and brake, and there's no way I'm faffing about with that. Once a more sensible option was selected, it was the turn of the camera to be fiddled with.
Again, by default on the PS3, the action camera is following your car as best it can, and when you handbrake turn around a corner, it swoops and wobbles and tries its best to keep up with the action as though you were watching a film. It's a style, and I'm sure for some situations it works, but for me trying to race without crashing, it's too low and erratic to enjoy. A few other options are available, including an in-car view, so there is something for everyone to use.
Both games need you to climb the street racing ladder again, and to do so involves driving around the streets of L.A. looking for a challenge and flashing your lights to instigate it, be it a race against a specific driver, or a group of racers looking to tear up the tarmac from one intersection to the next.
The map is quite sizeable, and challenges appear as and when the game opens them up to you, so it's not like Burnout Paradise in terms of every stoplight giving you something to do. Instead, you cruise around the city ignoring the cops (thankfully not present in the PSP game), heading for whichever difficulty level of race you're looking for.
There are specific missions for you to work towards to progress the barebones plot, but in general, you're racing for money to spend on your car, and reputation to hang with the big boys - and neither of them comes particularly quickly.
Not too long into the game, you open up a mechanic to pimp your ride, and when I say it is in-depth, I mean it. Paint job? Obviously. Logos and artwork? Of course? Neon lights? You bet. Spoilers, skirts, new hoods? Duh. Wheels? More than you think.
Ok, how about wheel dimensions? Yeah, Los Angeles has you covered. What about state-specific license plates? Puh-lease - Los Angeles even has historic plate designs for you to slap on the back of your car. The only reason I wasn't able to put this design on my car was that I ran out of money going over the top with the rest of it. If you've a dream design in mind, I bet you could recreate it here, even on the PSP.
At its heart, of course, is the racing. No matter who your opponent is or how many of them there are, whether it's a race from one point to another or a circuit with multiple laps, the races involve you blitzing through checkpoints until the finish line.
The roads are designed to make your life easier, with vast corners for you to drift around without too much worry or effort, lamposts that generally bounce you off without reducing your speed or altering your angle, and plenty of offroad short cuts across pedestrian zones or through buildings. The city is very much your playground.
But that's not to say it's always a flawless experience. Cars can and will appear out of nowhere, often thanks to the low camera. Smashing head first into traffic slows you down, obviously, but even if you spin because of it, the game will spin you right around and allow you to carry on racing.
Frustrations
While the driving may try to be forgiving, the actual challenge isn't so lenient. The difference between an easy green race and a hard red race is huge. I tried out a nearby hard challenge to see how hard it was at this stage of the game - i.e., way less than an hour in - and I struggled to get anywhere close to third place, even when you know the track from multiple attempts.
If you stick in the slipstream of the car ahead, you charge your nitrous boost and once full, can trigger it to shoot ahead into the distance. But it seems to be a one time use, and you've got to drive well to fill it up to begin with.
At this stage of the game, I also unlocked the ability to go into a slow-mo mode to increase my response time to avoid a race-ending collision or weave through traffic to show off. But the problem with that is that it is charged up by careful driving, and needs to be activated by thumbing over to the circle button, so you need to have expert reactions to trigger an ability that gives you a bigger reaction window...
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| Source // PlayStation |
Back to the PS3 for a minute to talk about the cops. They roam the city looking out for hooligans, which is fine by me. You avoid them by driving around them, or driving like a civilian should drive, and your HUD will flash and an audio warning will alert you to nearby police presence so that you can take action.
However. If they want to chase you, the chase is on, and the chase is generally a long one. Unlike GTA IV, you can't just drive in a straight line no matter your car. The police in Los Angeles will stick to you like glue, and pull more cars into the chase so that if one happens to crash, another isn't too far behind.
The penalty for getting caught seems to be a slap on the wrist and a fine, but it's the sting of being caught that propels you to outrun the cops, which you'll have to do in some races anyway, so you ought to get into an evasive driving mindset - but how? What do they look out for? What are the techniques?
I must only have gotten into three chases, but both times I escaped I didn't know how I did it. My bog standard Golf couldn't have out-performed a squad car. It's not like there's anywhere to hide, either. You've got to lose line of sight and hope for the best, I guess.
Final Word
After about an hour with both games, I came to the conclusion that neither were that bad, but neither were for me, either. The PS3 version has a sprawling city that is supposedly a good enough representation of L.A. that you can navigate your way through using the landmarks, and while the PSP can't match that scope, it drops the police presence entirely and gives you a second city, Tokyo, complete with its own campaign to race through.
Once you get a better feeling for the controls and the camera, Midnight Club: Los Angeles settles down into a street racer where the general gist of the game is known, but the little details will happen on the fly. Some drivers will race you to the start line for a little extra reputation, for example, keeping you in the mindset that this is a living city - complete with a day/night cycle - but if you want to just flash your lights and get on with it, you can.
If Burnout Paradise and Test Drive Unlimited were on a line, Midnight Club: Los Angeles sits in the middle. You can argue that it's attention to detail puts it closer to Test Drive, or that the arcadey nature of the racing is closer to Burnout, but enough is going on under the hood to at least give you a tough time trying to work out where it fits.
Maybe it doesn't fit on that line at all, and that was a stupid comparison to make. Shouldn't we be comparing Los Angeles to Need for Speed: Most Wanted instead? Whatever similar games you can imagine, the fact remains that I personally don't gravitate towards these kinds of games.
They're not bad, and can in places be really impressive. With offputting default controls and a story that might as well not exist, you're going to be playing Midnight Club: Los Angeles for the street racing, but if you don't like that to begin with, this one probably isn't going to change your mind.
Fun Facts
DLC for the game included police cars that you could not only race in, but if your race happened to be seen by the cops, you could stick your sirens on and pretend to be giving chase to the other racers, and the police would focus on those racers and not you.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles, developed by Rockstar San Diego, first released in 2008.
Versions played: Midnight Club: Los Angeles, PlayStation 3, 2008.
Midnight Club: L.A. Remix, PlayStation Portable, 2008, via emulation.