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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
rip through air with no speed ticket, 21 Jun 2003
Fans of racing games usually fall into two different camps: there are the ones who prefer extremely realistic racing simulations, and there are those who prefer a racing game that eschews the limitations of realism, and instead focus on delivering the most exciting, pulse-pounding racing experience possible. Dyed-in-the-wool fans of Sony’s best-selling Gran Turismo games will most likely cry foul at the unrealistic handling and ludicrous sense of speed in Rockstar Games’ Midnight Club II, but casual gamers will probably be too thrilled to care. Midnight Club II is the latest from Rockstar Games, also known as the King Midas of the gaming industry. After garnering almost universal critical acclaim and selling over 8 million copies of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (that’s equivalent to a $400 million movie, by the way), outdoing itself is a nearly impossible task for the company. With MC2, instead of trying to make an overly ambitious game in an attempt to outdo Vice City in scope and innovation, Rockstar has instead developed a game that takes familiar game concepts and polishes them up to the point of near-excellence. For those that are lost, MC2 focuses on the not-so-legal world of street racing. The atmosphere of the game seems to be more than a little influenced by The Fast and the Furious. Quite a few of the characters bear some resemblance to the archetypes from Furious, and the nighttime races seem to mimic the atmosphere of the movie. Thankfully, in MC2’s races the cars actually turn, and the computer-generated characters are considerably more lifelike than the wooden actors in Furious. The most important element of the races in MC2 is speed. The sense of it is incredible. Other cars on the road, pedestrians, buildings, bridges, and whatever else pass by at a blistering pace. And that’s before you use the nitrous oxide boosters. Thankfully, slowdown isn’t an issue, as the game never sputters or hiccups when you hit the really high speeds. The races themselves are highly enjoyable also. You get into a race by driving around the city and flashing your beams at another street racer. When the race starts, you and your opponents go on a mad dash through the city to try to go through all of the checkpoints first. Thankfully, the pristine control makes the madness easy to manage. Your thumb will for the most part be trained on the accelerator, and the handbrake is thankfully adjacent. Working nitro boosters, weight transfers, the horn, the beams, the brake, and the radio is easily done in the heat of a race, also. Unfortunately, this game is a little too focused on making the races exhilarating. Although tearing through the city does indeed rule, the whole experience feels a little too dumbed down. Every car controls the exact same, there is no way to make any non-aesthetic modifications to the cars, and ripping up the streets feels easier than it should be. With a simple tap of the handbrake your car can handle pretty much any tight turn. The races are very enjoyable, but the game’s difficulty level and the odd behavior of the computer-controlled enemies can mar the experience. Some of the races can become controller-breakingly difficult. It gets to the point that a perfect understanding of the shortcuts is required just to have a chance at winning. As for the enemy cars, they have an irritating tendency to kindly wait for you to catch up to them at the beginning of a race, and to ride your rear at the end. If you maintain a huge lead throughout the race but make a mistake at the end, you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose. On the other hand, you can liberally screw up at the beginning and have an equally high chance of winning. Flaws aside, Midnight Club II is almost ludicrously fun, but not quite worthy of the showroom
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