Wayne Cunningham is an evil, evil man who obviously takes pleasure in the suffering of others. Case in point: Midnight Club Los Angeles. A few weeks ago Wayne offered me a copy of the game on the Xbox 360.
I went down to Wayne's lair office and asked for the game. When dealing with the devil there are always strings attached, and before I could leave his office he asked me to make sure I write something up on the game. Damn. OK, playing games is one thing, but the pressure to actually have to write something up on it afterward changes the experience. Now I actually have to play it sometime soon and pay attention.
Motorcycles?!! Wow, i haven't gotten that far yet.
(Credit: Rockstar Games)This won't be a review of the game. I haven't spent nearly enough time with it for that. No, this will be more of an assessment of how seemingly pathetic my gaming skills have gotten since I began playing World of Warcraft.
I've always considered my myself a good gamer as far as skill goes. I was never at the level of the savants who come into an arcade and beat you silly while hardly looking at the screen. My skill was always at a level where I could beat most players that I encountered, no matter the game, and I finished most games (at normal difficulty) the same day I started playing them.
So imagine my surprise when Midnight Club Los Angeles proceeded to chew me up and spit me out in the first few hours of play. The game is a street racer. You basically drive around L.A., looking for computer-controlled opponents to race.
In those first few hours, I could not for the life of me win a single race. Not even the first race, which in games is usually a freebie designed to teach you the basic concept and make you feel better about yourself by making it very easy to win.
... Read More
Random traffic is a constant obstacle in Midnight Club: Los Angeles.
(Credit: CBS Interactive)After playing Midnight Club: Los Angeles, for the past week, I have to agree with the GameSpot review: the races are very difficult. But that's just the initial impression.
Grind for a while, make some money to get your car tuned up well, and you will start winning races. You start with a small potential selection of cars--I chose the 1998 Nissan 240SX--and get to drive around Los Angeles looking for people to race. Prepare to watch the other cars streak past you at the starting line, and spend the race negotiating your way through traffic and around turns, following your competitors to the finish line. But after grinding like this for a while, you build up enough money to upgrade your car. Performance mods, like forced induction (turbo) and sway bars, are essential. Then you will find yourself winning maybe 25 to 50 percent of the time, which is still a long way from rewarding.
I found that freeway racers seemed to be the easiest to beat early on, even if they have a higher level of difficulty. After upgrading my Nissan, I built a big enough bank account to buy a muscle car, the 1987 Buick Grand National GNX. That one is very fast, but the handling is lousy, even with all the suspension upgrades available.
This car also proved a problem because of the bad controller mapping of the game. You use the right stick to accelerate by pushing forward. Push back for braking and reverse. So on the approach to a turn, you want to brake. But this car has a nitrous injector that, when spooled up, also gets activated by pulling back the right stick. Braking for a turn suddenly turns into a high speed excursion into a wall. Fortunately, there is a handbrake, but without careful application you'll be pointing in the direction you've just come from.
... Read More
Rockstar convinced editor Wayne Cunningham to demo its Midnight Club: Los Angeles at the 2008 New York auto show. And that demo led to a mad rush through the show floor, looking for any other driving games to play. Fortunately, Subaru provided the ultimate controller and seat to drive its STI rally car in Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.
- prev
- 1
- next
