Midnight Club II
Console: PlayStation2
Publisher: Rockstar Games
Hot: Everything about it
Not: Good luck trying to find a flaw, because we sure couldn't
Score: 0 0 0 0 0
Bend The Law
Honestly, we'd have to develop a sudden raging thirst for butter and change our title to Bon Apptit if we didn't like this game. For those of you who know nothing about the Midnight Club series here's what it entails: Illegal street racing, and plenty of it. Of course, you hear us rail on and on every month about how we don't condone street racing unless it's, you know, legal, but in this case we're willing to make a massive exception. For one, Midnight Club II was designed by Rockstar Games, the same group of young geniuses who developed the Grand Theft Auto line. Secondly, it's just flat-out amazing because of the intense research the developers packed into it, from the minute details of every city to the obsessive approach they took to create the storyline by following real underground racers and attending banned street races, even if it meant getting arrested. In Rockstar's eyes, a night in jail would've only made the game better. Also, it is just a game, so we can condone it because you won't hurt anyone but the little pixilated people on the screen by ripping around crowded city streets, flying through food courts, and catching air off national monuments at top speed.
Moses Teaches The Commandments
From the start, Midnight Club II hits the pavement rolling with minimal learning stages, most likely to block ADD from taking over your mind and forcing you to throw the game control at the television or someone else's unlucky head. In the first mission, you meet Moses, an affable character who mysteriously looks a lot like our own Greg Yamamoto. Moses guides you through the first city, Los Angeles, and teaches you the basics of street racing, from flashing your brights at potential competitors to get things cooking or just maintaining speed with his slow-ass car so you can learn how to hit checkpoints correctly. After that's finished, get ready for battle, because none of the other characters will be nice to you. In fact, they'll try to kill you as best they can. They really hate to lose.
Railbranching
If you think Computer AI isn't a challenge at all, well, we'd have to say you're right about the majority of racing games out there. But not with Midnight Club II. Each opposing character here has a unique goal and perspective, but they share the universal ambition to carve a name for themselves within the underground circuit. As it goes in real life, if you lose a race or drive like a complete jackass, your reputation suffers and you will not advance. The resulting gameplay feeling is extremely competitive, and very real. Lead Game Designer Mauro Fiore of Rockstar San Diego explains how they incorporated such stiff opposition: "The races in Midnight Club II are heavily influenced by real-life illegal street racing. Although many street races are drag-style, where the competitors race a quarter-mile in a straight line, some real races, like the midnight clubs in Japan, actually go for long runs on highways. The player should pay close attention to the opponents, as they will use different shortcuts and tricks each race." Indirectly, Mauro is demonstrating a term Rockstar Games uses to describe the Computer AI, called railbranching, in which your opponent will branch off from one internal pathway to another in milliseconds, much like a human opponent would. In other words, the computer doesn't drive like it's on a rail, never varying from a preprogrammed course. Ultimately, the result is a much more challenging and fun opponent, because most of the time it will be kicking your ass.
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