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The
dark streets of London and New York are the setting for an outlaw group of
daring racers known as the Midnight Club. Skirting the law with their dangerous
battles, the club is quite selective in their membership and new recruits must
face a battery of skills tests in order to be accepted by the group. While there
are other modes included in Midnight Club, the main meat of the game is its
career mode – what’s cool about this is that there are two entirely separate
careers, one for London the other for New York, both of which offer significant
depth and challenge in their parallel paths. Starting with a lowly taxi-cab, you
start the game at the bottom rung and can work your way up the ladder by
challenging and subsequently defeating other members and winning their vehicles.
Taking the career path is a fairly straightforward option, but it works well
because the path to success is quite clear and simple to understand – just as
in the best arcade games, the emphasis is on gameplay not bells and whistles. In
addition to the career path, Midnight Club also features an arcade mode, which
is stripped down an consists solely of the race challenges. Finally, there is a
cool free-run mode included where players can familiarize themselves with the
layouts of each area.
In
Midnight Club, the player’s skill with their racer is paramount over
considerations such as realism and physics handling – this allows the game to
emphasize fun. The cars control very well, however and have just enough
grounding in reality to suspend the player’s disbelief. The arcade physics
means that you should be able to pull off some impressive turns and spins,
though this also means that there are a lot of exaggerated crashes and
outlandish jumps that can be accomplished as well. Midnight Club’s damage
system is fairly lenient and allows you to make quite a few major mistakes
before your car is totaled. As mentioned earlier, if you jump into a river or
lake, you immediately total the car and the race ends. This doesn’t apply in
free-run mode, where you are simply reanimated in another location when you hit
the water. Controlling the car is simple and straightforward: using the PS2’s
dual shock controller, with the 2 Dual shock analog pads used to steer and
accelerate. Players can also use the standard cross digital pad and the analog
buttons, but either way Midnight Club offers simple and responsive control. Visually,
Midnight Club is one of the more impressive Playstation 2 titles released to
date and suffers little from the jaggies that plague other racing titles. The
game runs at an good frame rate with little slowdown evident. As stated earlier,
players race through semi-accurate representations of New York and London. While
this may seem a bit cheap for some players, the fact that most of the levels
take place at night gives the game a nocturnal atmosphere that underlines the
outlaw feel of illicit racing. While the individual cars are pretty plain in
appearance, there is a lot of variety to them and they also showcase some
impressive lighting effects as they shine and glimmer while they speed under
lights. The actual building elements look fairly solid, if plain. Aside from the
fact that the proportions have been a bit compressed, (The PS2 isn’t that
powerful), the cities seem to be very close in scale and layout to the actual
physical locations with most areas in their proper place. Additionally, Midnight
Club does a good job and includes some of the cities’ major landmarks. Players
can race through Times Square Grand Central Station and will also pass the UN
building in New York and can also
look fly across the Thames River, pass through Trafalgar Square and Big Ben in
the London area. The areas are vast and impressive in scope , with both
showcasing plenty of lighting effects. What’s impressive is that there are a
variety of realistic and somewhat authentic structures which come in a variety
of sizes and designs. The engine is quite versatile and allows you to traverse
parks, smaller buildings and huge skyscrapers that loom in the distance, giving
the player an excellent sense of scale and proportion . Midnight Club also
impresses due to it’s special effects which include realistic rain,
outstanding light sourcing and reflections which combine with the level layouts
to heighten the realism of the engine. What’s
even better is that the buildings and other objects in the game gradually come
into view with little pop-in evident. There are also short-cuts and secret areas
to explore which adds even more fun to the game. The cities are in a word,
absolutely huge, with a vast area to drive through making for quite a visceral
racing experience. While the individual elements may not sound impressive, the
sum is greater than it’s parts and the overall graphics engine is very
impressive, especially considering that Midnight Club is the first game of
it’s ambition level to appear on the PS2 console. Despite it’s good points,
Midnight Club still a little rough in spots, mostly it feels a little plain
especially in the vehicle design department. This isn’t really a big problem,
and players should consider this title is a tantalizing taste of even more
impressive things to come as programmers come to grips with the hardware. Midnight
Club’s game environment and graphics are impressive enough on their own and
this is complimented nicely by the title’s soundtrack and in-game dialogue
which enhances the atmosphere and makes things that much more immersive. During
the game, you’ll hear rival drivers taunt you and make comments throughout.
These characters serve to motivate the player and add some tension to the
proceedings. The off-color remarks showcase Rockstar’s trademark attitude with
exaggerated characterizations and accents highly reminiscent of the humorous
approach seen in the company’s Grand Theft Auto series. Midnight Club’s
dance music soundtrack makes for good background and doesn’t overwhelm the
action. In fact, the music is played it a bit too safe because a more lively
score would have made the experience much more intense. So in the end, while the
structure and missions are simple, what really makes Midnight Club stand out are
its’ impressive environments mixed with its no-frills racing action. Players
looking for depth and rich simulation aspects are advised to look elsewhere
because the main appeal of Midnight Club is it’s streamlined gameplay and
incredibly rich graphical environment. In fact the experience of driving in the
quasi-accurate cities is the main appeal of the title. It’s not very deep and
it’s threadbare plot pales next to games like Driver, but Midnight Club does
offer an exciting, challenging and fun title that while not offering the deep
storyline or configurable vehicles many would like, is a solid effort. Midnight
Club isn’t perfect and shows evidence of “First-Generation” syndrome most
evidentially in it’s lack of depth. Still, it’s an extremely enjoyable game
that points tantalizingly to the potential and promise of future PS2 games.
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During
the game, your main mission is to beat the rival drivers, who taunt you
throughout each race. You do this by completing missions, which generally
involve racing them to a series of checkpoints that are well-marked by large
spotlights. The cities are realistic in structure and also have traffic and
pedestrians to contend with along with alerted police cars which can slow you
down. The traffic patterns are impressively realistic with stop-lights and flow
implemented in a realistic manner in the levels In addition, players have to
watch their cars damage indicator and can also be taken out of the race if they
crash off the top of a building or make a mistake and end up in a river or lake.
Rival cars are incredibly aggressive throughout the gamer and there is very
little room for error. This is a bit frustrating in the earlier levels, as your
taxi is quite limiting and beating rival racers is a chore at times While the
learning curve feels a bit steep and Midnight Club’s aggressive AI makes
playing seem impossibly difficult initially, things become much more enjoyable
as you master the