Eddiedundidit
07-24-2008, 02:44 PM
I’ve always had a soft spot for Rockstar’s street racing series Midnight Club, preferring it greatly over EA’s Need For Speed Underground series. I don’t know if it was the look or the way the cars handled, or if I just thought it was cooler because it was a Rockstar game. After seeing the latest installment to roll out of longtime developer Rockstar San Diego, with its incredibly shiny new coat of next-generation paint, the flames of our fandom have been fanned once again.
Just before E3, Rockstar came to visit us in “sunny” San Francisco to give us our first look at what they’ve been hiding in their garage for so long. The game began simply enough behind a car, a view that every racing game fan is quite used to. It was pleasing to note later on in the demo that there’s actually an in-car camera now too, the better to show off the interiors that you can customize in your garage. But more on those options later. We gazed off down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, westward towards the actual sunset. Instantly you can see the power of the Xbox 360’s graphics capabilities in the subtle lighting and reflections bouncing off the car. To the right, the outline of the famous Chateau Marmont where John Belushi took his final powder, in front of us the street dipping and curving past other landmarks of the area. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were in a perfect scale model replica of Los Angeles.
But you’re not, exactly. Oh, you’re in L.A., but a sort of abbreviated version of it, much like GTA 4’s Liberty City is an abbreviated version of NYC. The landmarks are there, and often at intersections, it seems like a perfect recreation. But it’s not. They’ve just cut out the boring parts. For those of you familiar with Southern California, the L.A. of Midnight Club is bordered on the East by the 5 freeway, on the South by the 10, on the West by the Pacific Ocean and to the North lies some of the San Fernando Valley. In case you need to go to the mall at any point, I guess.
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1745/1216786911.jpg
The city looks as gorgeous as the cars do, with famous landmarks and familiar parts of L.A. looking almost better than real life. Even though it’s just one city, the entire map is bigger than all three cities from Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition combined. So you’ll get plenty of places to explore and race other street racers like the freeway, downtown, the beach and even the twisty roads of the Hollywood Hills. Racing in each of those environments feels distinct from one another.
The whole city is open to you from the beginning, but if you want to race with the serious street machines, you’re going to have to build up your reputation (lets call it “REP” from here on out) to unlock bigger and badder machines and after market parts. There’s definitely a story to MC: LA, and a specific character you play as. Rockstar isn’t telling us much about him yet, but if he’s half as entertaining as either Niko or Roman we’ll be satisfied.
There are forty different vehicles you can own in MC: LA and they fall into four basic classes – Tuner, Luxury, Exotic and Muscle – as well as motorcycles you can burn rubber on. When we got to play the game, we tried out a couple different sets of wheels to feel how differently they handled. In the tuner class we got to drive the Mazda RX8 “Shinka”, which performed very much how you think a tuner should; quick and agile. Then we jumped into an Aston-Martin V8 Vantage Roadster for a taste of the Exotic lifestyle. It was much more powerful but still handled like a dream. But for raw power you can’t beat a muscle car, and the 1969 Mustang Boss 302 had power seeping out of every seam. That one is a real challenge to keep control of though.
If you were a fan of Dub Edition, then you’ll probably be glad to hear that the special moves system has stayed in the game. This time though, instead of the powers being attached to a specific car type, you can use any of them you want – Zone, Agro, Roar or the new one, EMP – on any car that you want. You’re just limited to one at a time. The mechanism works much the same as before, so if you’ve played the prior games you should feel right at home here.
Just driving the cars alone will make you feel right at home too. MC: LA is much more than just a prettified version of the same game, but handling and control feels very familiar. That’s an important thread to have running through the series. Speed, probably the key element of the game, still feels as fast as always if not more so than before.
Our time with the controller in our hands was pretty rewarding. We got to try a couple different modes out, including ordered races and some freeway races that were serious white knuckle affairs. The full list of race types includes:
Circuit Races: Just like an ordered race, but with multiple laps to complete, with checkpoints marked by the familiar colored smoke..
Unordered Races: These are races with checkpoints that you can clear in any order. Of course, that builds a strategy element into the game, and knowing your way around a map, especially where the shortcuts are, will be of immense help to finding the quickest path to victory.
Freeway Races: Flash your lights at a predetermined freeway racer (you can spot them on radar or your GPS map) and fly full speed through traffic to the end point. If you want to feel the true speed of the game, you can’t do much better than this.
Time Trials: Pretty straightforward; compete with the same vehicle to see who can get the lowest time for a particular route.
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1745/1208806612.jpg
Two vs four wheel action!
Tournaments: These involve multiple opponents, not just one on one affairs, and you earn points based on the place you come in. At the end points are tallied up and a winner declared.
Red Light Racer: One of the most free race types, you meet an opponent at a red light and race to a single point on the map, taking whatever route you please. Again, knowing the map really well is, as G.I. Joe says, half the battle.
Series Races: These are a collection of races that begin at the different racer hangouts spread across the map. First racer to win three is crowned the victor.
Wager Races: Money is an important component of MC:LA. It lets you buy new cars and parts. These are one on one races where the difficulty is raised based on the stakes.
Pinkslip Races: Another great way to acquire new rides? Just take them from racers who can’t keep up. You’ll need to own more than one car to compete in these (you can’t lose your only car, what would you do then?) but you can quickly build up your stable by taking away wheels from other people.
Delivery: We’re in Hollywood and the rich and famous are too busy being rich and famous to pick up the new cars they bought. So you get to deliver them. Of course, celebrities are a bunch of impatient jerks so there’s a time limit. Prevent any damage from happening to the cars en route and you’ll get a nice bonus.
Payback: You want to be pals with the mechanic. After all, this is the dude repairing and modifying your whips. But he’s got a temper, and he doesn’t like people that don’t pay him. So sometimes you can help him exact revenge by taking his vehicle out and hunting down the skinflints who owe him money and bashing their cars into oblivion.
Telephone Challenge: One of the other tools you’ll have in the game is your trusty T-Mobile Sidekick (hello product placement). Once in a while, people will call you up and challenge you to a race, which will then be displayed on the phone’s GPS display. These happen randomly, but assure that you’ll always have someone looking to race you any time.
In addition to just driving around and taking in the sights (what’s up officially licensed 7-11 stores everywhere!) we did do a couple races in very specific areas. One was called Sand and Surf and had us tearing around Santa Monica and the attached beach areas, fishtailing through sand that then transformed into the coastal highway. Mulholland and Beverly had us whipping around the tight curves amongst the mansions of the Hollywood Hills and down the other side into the Valley. Macarthur Cut took us through some sections of the LA River (which anyone who’s seen Grease knows is not really a river but terrific for car races) and back out on to the freeways for some high speed weaving. All of them were great in their own unique ways.
Then there’s the vehicle customization. All around the map are gas stations where you can repair your car or refill your nitrous (that one you can do at full speed, in the middle of a race), but there are two garages where you can do some serious modifications to your hoopty. You can purchase and apply all kinds of after-market upgrades that affect the handling, acceleration and speed of your car. These are name brand parts, if you care about that sort of thing.
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1745/1216786909.jpg
The chase is on!
You can also do a ton of modifications to change the way your car looks both inside and out. Hoods, bumpers, rims, ground kits, they’re all there. Plus, the option for customizing the inside of your car, from the upholstery to the dashboard design, is more than you’ve seen in any other game. But what’s really cool are the options in the paint shop. You can pick from an almost infinite number of colors on the color wheel, in any finish you want – matte, metallic, pearlescent, etc. – but now you can also create complex decals to put on the outside of your car. It uses a photoshop-type layering system much like Forza did, but not with quite the same amount of power; only sixty-four layers. But with that amount of flexibility, good artists should be able to make some pretty awesome custom liveries that might hold up against the awesome user created ones we saw in Forza 2.
Finally, MC: LA is bringing back the Police that were introduced in Dub Edition. Johnny Law is out there and he’s trying to put the kibosh on your good time. They’re promised to be more intelligent and dynamic, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Either way you don’t want to get busted by the Po-Po; there are some hefty fines you’ll have to pay if you do. Beat them and you’ll earn some serious REP though.
Street racing games really have become a dime-a-dozen genre, so it’s good to see the return of a series that always stood above the crowd. Midnight Club: Los Angeles looks like a well thought out and well designed progression of the series, and we’ll be counting the days (and our real life speeding tickets) until the game is released on October 7th of this year.
source (http://previews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/2063/Midnight-Club-Los-Angeles/p1/)
Just before E3, Rockstar came to visit us in “sunny” San Francisco to give us our first look at what they’ve been hiding in their garage for so long. The game began simply enough behind a car, a view that every racing game fan is quite used to. It was pleasing to note later on in the demo that there’s actually an in-car camera now too, the better to show off the interiors that you can customize in your garage. But more on those options later. We gazed off down Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, westward towards the actual sunset. Instantly you can see the power of the Xbox 360’s graphics capabilities in the subtle lighting and reflections bouncing off the car. To the right, the outline of the famous Chateau Marmont where John Belushi took his final powder, in front of us the street dipping and curving past other landmarks of the area. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were in a perfect scale model replica of Los Angeles.
But you’re not, exactly. Oh, you’re in L.A., but a sort of abbreviated version of it, much like GTA 4’s Liberty City is an abbreviated version of NYC. The landmarks are there, and often at intersections, it seems like a perfect recreation. But it’s not. They’ve just cut out the boring parts. For those of you familiar with Southern California, the L.A. of Midnight Club is bordered on the East by the 5 freeway, on the South by the 10, on the West by the Pacific Ocean and to the North lies some of the San Fernando Valley. In case you need to go to the mall at any point, I guess.
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1745/1216786911.jpg
The city looks as gorgeous as the cars do, with famous landmarks and familiar parts of L.A. looking almost better than real life. Even though it’s just one city, the entire map is bigger than all three cities from Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition combined. So you’ll get plenty of places to explore and race other street racers like the freeway, downtown, the beach and even the twisty roads of the Hollywood Hills. Racing in each of those environments feels distinct from one another.
The whole city is open to you from the beginning, but if you want to race with the serious street machines, you’re going to have to build up your reputation (lets call it “REP” from here on out) to unlock bigger and badder machines and after market parts. There’s definitely a story to MC: LA, and a specific character you play as. Rockstar isn’t telling us much about him yet, but if he’s half as entertaining as either Niko or Roman we’ll be satisfied.
There are forty different vehicles you can own in MC: LA and they fall into four basic classes – Tuner, Luxury, Exotic and Muscle – as well as motorcycles you can burn rubber on. When we got to play the game, we tried out a couple different sets of wheels to feel how differently they handled. In the tuner class we got to drive the Mazda RX8 “Shinka”, which performed very much how you think a tuner should; quick and agile. Then we jumped into an Aston-Martin V8 Vantage Roadster for a taste of the Exotic lifestyle. It was much more powerful but still handled like a dream. But for raw power you can’t beat a muscle car, and the 1969 Mustang Boss 302 had power seeping out of every seam. That one is a real challenge to keep control of though.
If you were a fan of Dub Edition, then you’ll probably be glad to hear that the special moves system has stayed in the game. This time though, instead of the powers being attached to a specific car type, you can use any of them you want – Zone, Agro, Roar or the new one, EMP – on any car that you want. You’re just limited to one at a time. The mechanism works much the same as before, so if you’ve played the prior games you should feel right at home here.
Just driving the cars alone will make you feel right at home too. MC: LA is much more than just a prettified version of the same game, but handling and control feels very familiar. That’s an important thread to have running through the series. Speed, probably the key element of the game, still feels as fast as always if not more so than before.
Our time with the controller in our hands was pretty rewarding. We got to try a couple different modes out, including ordered races and some freeway races that were serious white knuckle affairs. The full list of race types includes:
Circuit Races: Just like an ordered race, but with multiple laps to complete, with checkpoints marked by the familiar colored smoke..
Unordered Races: These are races with checkpoints that you can clear in any order. Of course, that builds a strategy element into the game, and knowing your way around a map, especially where the shortcuts are, will be of immense help to finding the quickest path to victory.
Freeway Races: Flash your lights at a predetermined freeway racer (you can spot them on radar or your GPS map) and fly full speed through traffic to the end point. If you want to feel the true speed of the game, you can’t do much better than this.
Time Trials: Pretty straightforward; compete with the same vehicle to see who can get the lowest time for a particular route.
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1745/1208806612.jpg
Two vs four wheel action!
Tournaments: These involve multiple opponents, not just one on one affairs, and you earn points based on the place you come in. At the end points are tallied up and a winner declared.
Red Light Racer: One of the most free race types, you meet an opponent at a red light and race to a single point on the map, taking whatever route you please. Again, knowing the map really well is, as G.I. Joe says, half the battle.
Series Races: These are a collection of races that begin at the different racer hangouts spread across the map. First racer to win three is crowned the victor.
Wager Races: Money is an important component of MC:LA. It lets you buy new cars and parts. These are one on one races where the difficulty is raised based on the stakes.
Pinkslip Races: Another great way to acquire new rides? Just take them from racers who can’t keep up. You’ll need to own more than one car to compete in these (you can’t lose your only car, what would you do then?) but you can quickly build up your stable by taking away wheels from other people.
Delivery: We’re in Hollywood and the rich and famous are too busy being rich and famous to pick up the new cars they bought. So you get to deliver them. Of course, celebrities are a bunch of impatient jerks so there’s a time limit. Prevent any damage from happening to the cars en route and you’ll get a nice bonus.
Payback: You want to be pals with the mechanic. After all, this is the dude repairing and modifying your whips. But he’s got a temper, and he doesn’t like people that don’t pay him. So sometimes you can help him exact revenge by taking his vehicle out and hunting down the skinflints who owe him money and bashing their cars into oblivion.
Telephone Challenge: One of the other tools you’ll have in the game is your trusty T-Mobile Sidekick (hello product placement). Once in a while, people will call you up and challenge you to a race, which will then be displayed on the phone’s GPS display. These happen randomly, but assure that you’ll always have someone looking to race you any time.
In addition to just driving around and taking in the sights (what’s up officially licensed 7-11 stores everywhere!) we did do a couple races in very specific areas. One was called Sand and Surf and had us tearing around Santa Monica and the attached beach areas, fishtailing through sand that then transformed into the coastal highway. Mulholland and Beverly had us whipping around the tight curves amongst the mansions of the Hollywood Hills and down the other side into the Valley. Macarthur Cut took us through some sections of the LA River (which anyone who’s seen Grease knows is not really a river but terrific for car races) and back out on to the freeways for some high speed weaving. All of them were great in their own unique ways.
Then there’s the vehicle customization. All around the map are gas stations where you can repair your car or refill your nitrous (that one you can do at full speed, in the middle of a race), but there are two garages where you can do some serious modifications to your hoopty. You can purchase and apply all kinds of after-market upgrades that affect the handling, acceleration and speed of your car. These are name brand parts, if you care about that sort of thing.
http://media.teamxbox.com/games/ss/1745/1216786909.jpg
The chase is on!
You can also do a ton of modifications to change the way your car looks both inside and out. Hoods, bumpers, rims, ground kits, they’re all there. Plus, the option for customizing the inside of your car, from the upholstery to the dashboard design, is more than you’ve seen in any other game. But what’s really cool are the options in the paint shop. You can pick from an almost infinite number of colors on the color wheel, in any finish you want – matte, metallic, pearlescent, etc. – but now you can also create complex decals to put on the outside of your car. It uses a photoshop-type layering system much like Forza did, but not with quite the same amount of power; only sixty-four layers. But with that amount of flexibility, good artists should be able to make some pretty awesome custom liveries that might hold up against the awesome user created ones we saw in Forza 2.
Finally, MC: LA is bringing back the Police that were introduced in Dub Edition. Johnny Law is out there and he’s trying to put the kibosh on your good time. They’re promised to be more intelligent and dynamic, which is either a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. Either way you don’t want to get busted by the Po-Po; there are some hefty fines you’ll have to pay if you do. Beat them and you’ll earn some serious REP though.
Street racing games really have become a dime-a-dozen genre, so it’s good to see the return of a series that always stood above the crowd. Midnight Club: Los Angeles looks like a well thought out and well designed progression of the series, and we’ll be counting the days (and our real life speeding tickets) until the game is released on October 7th of this year.
source (http://previews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/2063/Midnight-Club-Los-Angeles/p1/)