Midnight Club: Los Angeles

After reading various reviews of this game, I felt compelled to add my 2 cents. I've never played a Midnight Club game before, but have always loved earlier versions of Need For Speed. Until the travesty that was Need For Speed Pro Racer - ugh! So I've always thought the next-gen consoles were lacking a truly great arcade racer (I don't class the awesome PGR4 as an arcade racer).

i took a chance on this as it was so cheap - the fact that it was based on the GTA4 graphics engine also seemed to appeal. Once I'd found a camera view to suit (I still veer between the "classic" view and the in-car view), I drove around for a few minutes. I was struck by how great the graphics were, the sense of speed, the lack of any graphical slowdown. Then I entered a few races. Within about 5 minutes I realised this was the arcade racer I wanted Need For Speed to be (but isn't). The handling is perfect - to make a difficult corner, all you need to do is slow down slightly.

Another thing that impressed me was the navigation system. Burnout Paradise was unplayable for me, as I never knew which sodding way I was supposed to go!! The navigation on this game, however, is nigh-on perfect. You cannot miss where you are supposed to go (apart from some later races where you might miss the odd tricky corner). Switching between objectives is also a breeze.

Lastly, as with many games, it gets better as you go on, unlocking better cars. The garage in this game strangely gives you the opportunity to test-drive the best models, so stright away you get a feeling of what it's like to drive the very fastest models.

In a nutsehll, I would urge any racing game fan to buy this. It hasn't got the advertising clout that EA has, with their (now defunkt) Need For Speed series.... What it has got is a game that is developed, clearly, by very clever people. It looks as good as GTA4. The cars handle brilliantly. The game mechanism is so user-friendly. Most importantly, this game is pure FUN. Read more ›

Midnight Club Los Angeles is the fourth in the series of Midnight Club games and it is absolutely great! The city of angels is stunning to look at, with noticeable landmarks such as the Hollywood sign and Santa Monica pier on the way. Gameplay is varied with everything from point to point races to circuit racing and even a mode where you have to crash another car off the road! Sounds are good with everthing from rap to rock songs and some dance too. The only slight problem is that the game is rather difficult but nevertheless challenging as some race routes are a bit frustrating aswell as AI being a bit gruesome! But All in All a good game.

I played this game first while visiting a friend. I'm usualy cautious about new racing games becase they are either a poor rip off of the need for speed series or they are not origional. At first I took a dislike to the game when presented with 3 bad cars to start out with.

However after about an hour or so of playing and a few tune ups later I had grown very fond of the car dubbing it the "Initial D car" this was only helped by the huge ammount of customization that is avaliable including the licence plates and weel dimensions.

I read other reviews saying how the crash system made it imposible to recover a race after the first crash. and i simply found this to be untrue. if you crash at everyother turn your likely to loose but if you keep an eye out and drive well enough you should be able to keep the other racers from escaping.People seem to look down on the crash aspect of the game but all i can tell is that they must be terrible at the game to lose on every ocasion they crash.

The pinkslip race system was very intuitive since the first attempt i made at the race resulted me losing my car. But when i returned with my "initial D" car seeing it as a make or break part of the gane i was relieved to see that the car i had lost could be won back.

Finaly the powerups. (my personal favourite Roar) never ceased to make me laugh when at the flick of a button you can send your oponent cars flying off the road into traffic.

I brought this game from amazon less than a week ago and it is great. I have started my career and the custimization is limitless. My favourite part of it is that you can do up the interior with seats, steering wheels, gauges and neon

The graphics are amazing and there are about 5 different types of views including cockpit which is really cool. I was really impressed by the choices of races and they are colour coded.

It is loads better than midnight club 3 DUB edition, the cars are really cheap and the game just makes you want to go on and play it for ages! something that is loads better is the public cars they are all suped up and really cool. But, the graphics of them is AMAZING! The only downside is that the money you get from races is low to start off with but, i have already noticed that it is rising quickly and i'm already getting big money for each race.

Last point, is that when your on cruise, la seems HUGE! I could just go driving on and on and not get bored. This is a great game and should be bought!!! Thanks for reading

Fisrt off, I am not just someone who enjoys occassionally playing racing games, i see myself as being pretty good at them (im not anywhere near a pro, but am more than competent when it comes to knowing how to win etc - i complete all the NFS games and various others and rarely have to repeat races on them)

As soon as I started the game I was amazed by the graphics, they made GTA IV graphics look basic as the atttention do detail is excellent, and even the regular cars are recognisable cars in reality (like there are Cadillac Escalades just driving around) which in many games are just 'boxy' looking. The feel of the cars is very good too and customisation of your car is great with lots and lots of things you can do.

However the level of difficulty from the start is high, as the AI system gives little room for error, so if you make one small error the opponents will overtake you, and if you crash into oncoming traffic its horrific, meaning often the race is solely playing catch-up. There is no way of changing the difficulty level either so your stuck with it. I found this over time became really annoying having to repeat races so much in the end I stuck the game back on eBay as it got too irritating! Its a shame really, as if the difficulty level could be changed to make it easier, I would say it would easily beat the NFS series, especially now theyve become more 'legal racing' like and has gone downhill since they changed from the street racing versions like Underground, MW and Carbon.

The Midnight Club series games have always been more challenging than your typical racing game (ive owned all 4!), however this one I feel is the most difficult of the lot and has let itself down due to this.