Midnight Club II builds on the illegal street racing fun found in the PS2 launch title Midnight Club. Like that game it pits you against street toughs in non-linear street races, all for bragging rights and access to better and more sophisticated rides. New in Midnight Club II are the police and the ability to drive a motorcycle.Midnight Club II builds on the illegal street racing fun found in the PS2 launch title Midnight Club. Like that game it pits you against street toughs in non-linear street races, all for bragging rights and access to better and more sophisticated rides. New in Midnight Club II are the police and the ability to drive a motorcycle.
The game begins with you in the charge of a slob named Moses. He acts as tutor, teaching you how to control your beater car and how to use power-ups, as well as offering overall moral support. He teaches you how to go about the business of the game: earning new gear such as Nitrous Oxide, new cars, and even new controls. The award of new controls later in the game show how you’re a novice driver at the start but by the end you’re a pro who can land on all four wheels after a jump, expertly control a power slide turn, and much, much more.
Much of the game consists of cruising around three large and well rendered cities: Paris, Tokyo, and Los Angeles. You don’t just challenge someone to a race or sign up for an event and show up. Instead you get a map and have to follow a red dot. The dot is a rival racer. Once you track and chase him down, you flash your high beams and then you can race him. It’s a clever way of giving you a warm up, keeping you immersed in the game, and best of all, teaching you the layout of each city.
Racing is fun, fast, and furious. This isn’t a simulation, it’s an arcade-style racer–but the physics system is internally consistent so it feels more “realistic” than it actually is. Rockstar has put a premium on keeping you in control, keeping the thrill-factor high, and giving you a heart stopping sense of speed. The graphics are fantastic and the cities are incredibly detailed. As a counter-point, the voice acting is just plain awful.
Midnight Club II offers a wide range of game modes ensuring it will be playable for a long time to come: career, mission, and a mode that lets you just jump into a race. Multiplayer is possible in hotseat mode, but it also supports Internet play. Internet lag is bad over dial-up modem (PS2), but broadband players (Xbox Live or PS2) will find the game silky smooth. All of this makes Midnight Club II a great addition to any videogame racing fan’s library, but a must for online fans.–Bob Andrews
Pros:
- Great physics, intense action
- Excellent graphics
- Plenty of game modes, including broadband multiplayer
Cons:
- Poor voice acting
- xbox
- Video Game
- action/adventure
- racing
- Midnight Club
List Price: $ 19.99
Price: $ 2.85
Ho-hum graphics, tough races, but fun nonetheless,
Midnight Club II is a decent but unspectacular racer that is pretty tough but fun if you have the patience to stick it out.
The game obviously has its origins in Rockstar’s “Grand Theft Auto III”. Everything from the feel of the cars to the look of the city and the behavior of the pedestrians can be traced to that game. MCII obviously adds lots of bells and whistles to the basic driving controls. You have nitrous boosts, can control the balance of the car in mid-air, and can earn “slipstream turbo” by drafting behind other cars until a meter fills up and turns red.
The cityscapes are great, with nice recreations of L.A., Paris and Tokyo. There are tons of hidden alleys, jumps, parking garages, and shopping malls to explore.
The cars are mediocre. You won’t find actual Acuras or Ferraris here. Instead, the game gives us cars loosely modeled on actual vehicles. The models are okay, but are not as polished as, say, Burnout 2, another game with fictitious cars.
The actual racing is pretty fun, though. Most involve having to hit a series of checkpoints scattered throughout the city. There is lots of room for finding your own path, taking advantage of the aforementioned alleys, ramps and passages.
However, the game is pretty tough. I found I probably have to replay each race about 10 times before winning. Also, in each race you basically have to come in first. There is no bronze medal for placing third, you’ll have to start over. Basically it is impossible to win a race on your first time out, as you can do in Project Gotham 2 and Burnout 2. The difficulty may be one of the game’s biggest drawbacks. In fact, when I first got it, I eventually just quit because I wasn’t having any fun doing the same race over and over. But recently I picked it up again and have been having quite a bit of fun trying to figure out the best routes, even if it does take a dozen tries.
In short, I would dock this game one star for the bad graphics, and one star for the difficulty, but give back one star now that the price has come down. Gamers who like casual driving games should definitely consider picking this up.
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|I really wanted to like this game.,
I really did, It’s stylish, has great graphics, and great responsive controls.
But there are too many problems with this game, making it frustrating. First off the get the checkpoints in any order is a really annoying way to race. And while I don’t mind a challenge I don’t want to play a race 20 times until I beat it if it’s not fun after the first 5. The gamemakers really should have put in an difficulty setting, instead of making you use a cheat code which either makes it way too easy or doesn’t seem to do anything at all.
There are problems with the controls. Not the steering, the steering is tight and feels natural; none of the button set-up make much sense. Another problem is no option to use your own soundtracks as BGM. Every other racing game I’ve ever played on the Xbox has had this option so why not this one?
While the game has a nice sense of speed and style, it’s just not nearly as fun as Burnout 2.
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