John Gillooly finds a new use for nitrous oxide.
Arcade racing game. Stop cringing, we know that this genre of gaming has been marred by patchiness over the past few years, and slid into the background with the Gran Turismo driven focus towards "real" driving games. But with EA's recent revitalisation of the Need for Speed series, and Rockstar San Diego's Midnight Club II there is a small glimmer of hope.
Based around the popular underground pursuit of illegal street racing, Midnight Club II is essentially Rockstar San Diego's second attempt at this title. The original was by no means a great title, thanks to last minute removals of key game aspects like motorbikes and the entire city of Tokyo.
Thankfully the graphics engine remains essentially the same but the developers have delivered a more complete gameplay experience. Like all good arcade racers, there is a focus on speed with this title, which makes for fast gameplay and some truly insane driving. Action takes place over a series of real world based but artistically condensed cities, starting in Los Angeles then progressing to Paris and finally Tokyo.
In the career mode you have to cruise each city searching for other racers, when you spot them a quick flash of the headlights signifies your desire to race them and win their pink slips. While this 'cruise' portion of the game lets you travel all over the cities, the actual races are set in stone and are triggered once you follow your opponent to a predestined start point.
Races vary from simple 'avoid the cops' free for alls to non-linear checkpoint dashes to set races through the city. Usually you end up racing against 5 or 6 cars, and you always need to come first in order to progress. Unfortunately the non-linear nature of the races has it falling into a tried and true gameplay trap; trial and error.
Enemy racer AI can be brutal at times, which means that while one stuff up in a race may be recoverable, more than one has you jamming the start button and restarting. The more difficult races consist of trying to learn the track at high speed while trying to stay ahead of the pack. In other words you race until you miss a turn, then restart and hope that you remember where the turn is. Then you race until you make that turn, miss the next one and repeat the process until you win.
It isn't frustrating for the most part, but it gets annoying when you need to race through dozens of checkpoints to beat the top racer in town. The corollary to this is that when you do win the race there is a warm fuzzy glow of satisfaction that comes from knowing you just pulled out the perfect race.
The action is not just confined to the four wheeled variety. You can also win motorbikes, which are faster and much more manoeuvrable than the cars. However they can be a bitch to control, and the slightest tap from a passing car will have you tumbling through the air. Get the bike control right though, and it is hard to go back to the cars no matter how fast they are.
Besides cruise mode there is also split screen multiplayer and online play through the PS2 network adapter that is still far from an Aussie release. Unlike last year's Auto Modellista from Capcom that suffered horribly from the lack of online support, Midnight Club 2 has a broad enough single player experience to compensate.
Despite minor tweakage to the original graphics engine, Midnight Club II still looks rough around the edges. Textures and models are competent but not outstanding, and the occasional flashy effects seen when you send a streetlamp flying seem out of place among the generally dark, drab environments.
Environments do not impact too much though, because they are usually flying past at ridiculous speed, often sideways. The key benefit of Midnight Club II is that it maintains a good frame rate despite the often chaotic mess of traffic onscreen. This combines with the hugely exaggerated car physics to make for a fun and frenetic driving experience, even when riding semi-airborne at ball-gripping speed after hitting your Nitrous button.
Midnight Club II is a solid game that is kept from greatness by the sheer difficulty and the fact that online play is still a while off. Hardened gamers who love the challenge of getting things just right, and are not afraid of replaying a race over and over will get the most out of Midnight Club II; others may just get scared away by the difficulty.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012