Bit of history

Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the latest addition in the Midnight Club series. As the title states, the game is set in the streets of Los Angeles, giving you a new area to tear up alone or with your friends.

Rockstar have never been shy with the games they bring out. With the Midnight Club series spanning way back from late 2000, there has been a lot of time for improvement in just about every area. Prior to the launch of Midnight Club: Street Racing, they helped in the making of Midtown Madness, a city style racing and free roaming PC title. This gave them a good forefront in the racing genre to really give their title a fighting chance against all the other racing games out at the time. Since then, spanning two sequels before the latest in the series, a lot of improvements have come to the series. Like being able to customise just about everything on your car from wheel trims to spoilers to body kits.

Midnight Club 2 introduced motorcycles into the game in 2003, which made it the first racing game to have bikes versus cars racing through city streets. This has followed through up to Midnight Club: LA, adding on to the previous games. In Midnight Club 3 there were different skills you could use to your advantage while racing, which was a nice touch. I won’t be surprised if they make an appearance again.

New and improved

The few new perks they have added to the latest iteration in their series are dynamic weather and virtually no menus anywhere in the game. The dynamic weather in racing games is often something you don’t see to have any affect on the performance of the car. This time around, however, the weather does alter things a little. If it is raining, the roads will become wet, which means that the brakes have less traction on them. Luckily, it won’t be enough to end up becoming something so tedious that it will make you stop playing. Midnight Club: Los Angeles also brings a 24 hour day/night cycle into effect, where the real world time affects the time of day in the game. This means that if you play in the morning, it will be light, but if you play at night, you will be racing in the dark. This feature also adds another aspect into the mix; different amounts of traffic appear throughout the day.

In Midnight Club 3, you had to follow your opponent to the starting line. This time around, you will have to RACE them. You no longer have to follow a set path lead by your opponent; instead you can take any path you like to reach the finish line. So you no longer have to wait for the other car if it crashes into some traffic. This new concept gives you that little bit of extra freedom.