Midnight Club - The Games I've Played

Racing games, I haven't touched a serious racing game like this (I've done go-kart E for everyone games that rubber band like no other) in a long time, so with this one getting off of the bookshelf and into the system, it's an interesting look into the world of racing games.

Remember how I like story lines? How that I'm a sucker for progression in characters or locations or whatever it might be?

Yeah, there's none of that.

You have a car, you have a phone. People call you on the phone and tell you that they want to race you. Why? Because you race, and that's what you do. There's no story, no reasoning behind anything, the only real challenge of the entire thing is a new track or a new car that you have to race against. The cops are a joke, you can get out of any ticket ever, there's no real consequences for any of your actions, it's built around the entire basis that you want to race people and so that is what it's going to do.

The graphics are amazing, the the soundtrack as you drive around is crazy diverse, but at it's core the game does not try to hide the fact that it's a racing game and that you're only there to race. Which leaves some questions to be answered. Midnight club? It's not only at midnight that you race, and there certainly doesn't seem to be a club anywhere in the game. Even a loose organization of people that could constitute a club at school doesn't even make it into the game.

You can do a lot of things, like customize your ride and make it look like a one of a kind beast . . . but there's no reason to do it. You don't unlock anything special, you don't go faster, and it's purely cosmetic, so I just stick with a stock paint job and rims.

The only part about the game that I've got a small beef with is that coming from a RPG player who is used to grinding holy cow do they use the same race tracks over and over again. You know, for being a racing game that has the ENTIRE city of LA at it's finger tips to make tracks through, it likes to send you through the same intersections, the same paths. It has the possibility to take you on a tour of the entire city, and instead it chooses to do limited, small routes that link together in the same exact ways.

The only other odd thing about this game is the RNG. The time of races, the weather, and even the traffic is randomly generated every time you race. For some of the more difficult races it's not a question of if you can beat the other racers, it's a question of if the RNG elements will be nice to you and give you the edge over the NPC's. It also doesn't hurt that the computer is a cheating bastard. Sometimes it works within the normal laws that you have to work under, but other times cars that should never pass you wizz by you without a second thought. You can be in the lead by 10+ seconds the entire race (10 seconds at 100 mph is a good distance) but then the rubberband snaps just as you're getting close to the end and you get wiped off the face of the earth by cars that happen to be in the worst spot possible on turns that would require Asian level reflexes that the computer can speed by but send you spiraling into a nasty slow motion cut scene of your wreck. It's honestly better to be in last place for most of the race and then use the rubber band mechanics to your advantage at the end of a race to take first place from the cheating NPC's. It's not so much a question of skill as it is a question of if the game is going to be nice enough to set the RNG in a way that will let you win.