GC 2007: Midnight Club: Los Angeles Preview - IGN (original) (raw)

Rockstar's Midnight Club series has quickly been gaining a huge fanbase around the world, and the last release, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, saw the sale of more than 5 million copies worldwide. Rockstar San Diego is currently hard at work on the fourth installment in the series for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and with it the studio aims to redefine what a racing title should be.
We got our first look at Midnight Club: Los Angeles earlier this week, and it looks like Rockstar San Diego may indeed be coming close to its goal. The game is sleeker, prettier, faster and more intense than any of its predecessors, and is overall fairly impressive at this point. We were given the common disclaimer that what we saw was early code and that all sorts of stuff needed to be polished, but it was already running and looking pretty damn slick.

Just getting to the starting line is a race.

One of Rockstar San Diego's goals with the game is to have players racing as often as possible, and to keep them from sifting through menu screens as much as it can. This streamlined presentation looks to work really well at this point as most menu pop-ups aren't separate screens but rather quick notifications that tell you what place you finished in and how much money you earned. You never leave your main view, and a single click of the button removes the menu and you're right back racing.

Starting a dynamic race against an opponent is as simple as flashing your lights in his or her general direction, and then racing them to the starting line. Yep, you read that right. Even getting to the race is a race in Midnight Club: Los Angeles, proof that you'll rarely find yourself just driving around without another car breathing down your tailpipe.

A new concept in Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the use of Reputation Points. You'll earn these just for racing, though the better you place the more you'll earn. Your Reputation Point total will dictate what cars you have at your disposal, which races you can partake in and so on. Whereas in past Midnight Club games it was possible to get stuck if you weren't quite good enough to beat a race or two, the Reputation Point system will ensure that even if you suck behind the wheel you'll be able to progress, albeit slowly. The harder the race you take on, the more you'll earn, so winning one long race may earn you multiple times the Reputation for winning a short sprint, giving you plenty of incentive for taking on the longer and riskier races.

After a race, it's likely that your ride will be all banged up, so you'll want to get it fixed before the next run so that you don't crash out. Instead of having to retreat to your garage to get repaired, a new Quick Fix option will allow you to get your ride integrity back up to 100%, though it won't exactly look pristine. Shoddy paneling and so forth will be used to repair your car, so though you'll be fully protected, you will have to head back to your garage in order to refit it with the right, snazzy-looking parts.

The hills of Hollywood will be a constant backdrop during your races.

Midnight Club's version of Los Angeles isn't a 100% accurate representation, but rather a "best of" version of the city. Being as the real city isn't exactly designed for racing at 150+mph through downtown (not to mention the traffic), Rockstar San Diego has taken the liberty of tweaking the city's layout to make it as fun as possible. You will, however, be able to deftly navigate the city if you know its actual layout pretty well as it's fairly close to the real design, just not exact.

One rather impressive stat for you is that the size of Los Angeles in the newest game is equal to the size of all three cities in Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition put together. Indeed, it's a large metropolis for racing, and we doubt you'll quickly run out of new areas to explore.

This time around, you won't have to race through the city streets only at night. Midnight Club: Los Angeles features a full day/night cycle replete with a dynamic weather system. Shadows and such will move and stretch as the sun sets, and the skyline will turn a nice, other-worldly orange to reflect LA's clean air. Inclement weather like rain will randomly kick in, forcing you to take things a little more carefully.

Aside from the lighting, the time of day will actually reflect gameplay as traffic patterns will work based on realistic traffic congestion. In the mornings and evenings, traffic will be a little heavier as people travel to and from their Hollywood (read: food service) jobs. There won't be stop-and-go traffic, as that would simply be bad for gameplay in a racing game, but you will need to dodge more vehicles during these hours. So plan on saving those long and hard races for the middle of the night or very early morning…

Detail on the cars is extremely fine.

To help you navigate the city, two different map options are available. The first is an in-game overlay that you can pop up on top of your racing screen, allowing you to drive while you keep track of where you're going. You obviously don't want to race like this, but it helps in getting from place to place.

The much cooler and more advanced map is seen through your GPS system. Bringing this up takes you to a full-screen 3D map that accurately displays lights and weather depending on the current situation (it'd be dark but lit with streetlights at night, and clouds will slightly obscure your view when the weather's turned bad). From here, you can pick certain spots or even an individual car you want to race and it'll be marked on your in-game map, and the standard arrow system will help you find said point or car. It's an impressive system.

Perhaps our most favorite part of the demo has to do not with the cars themselves (which we'll get to in a second), but rather the camera options. New to the series is an in-car view that accurately displays each vehicle's dashboard, steering wheel, instrumentation and more. Your driver's hands are in view, and you'll actually see him shift when necessary.

Out of the car, the third-person camera has had a lot of work done to it, and the results are very, very cool. When you take a tight turn and skid around the corner, the camera pans in and to the side of your car, leaving your vehicle on the outer edge of the camera as it swings in towards the center of the screen. It gives the impression that it's barely able to hold on at that speed, and very much looks like what you'd find in a Hollywood chase sequence. Other camera tweaks include a slight shake when you shift to infer the kick of the engine, and a close zoom when you use nitrous or are drafting. It's all very cool stuff.

Motorcycles are back.

As for the cars themselves, we were only privy to seeing three vehicles, but all three looked fantastic. Demoed for us were a 2006 Mitsubishi 3000GT, a 1969 Mustang 302 Boss and a 2006 Lamborghini Gallardo Roadster. Each car is rendered with around 100,000 polygons (for both the interior and exterior combined), allowing for tons of detail on everything down to the wheel wells. The city too looks great, nicely utilizing Rockstar's RAGE technology, the same engine being used in Grand Theft Auto IV.

As for other features, Rockstar told us that online play will indeed be present in the game, though it's keeping mum for now on details behind that. Likewise, customization and motorcycles will both return from the last game, though again, Rockstar is keeping its proverbial lips sealed for the time being on those elements as well.

Midnight Club: Los Angeles is set to ship sometime in early 2008.