Midnight Club: Street Racing

"Not for everyone..."

I’d heard a lot of really good things about this game, I really did. Add in the fact that it was a $20 Greatest Hits title and I thought I couldn’t go wrong. Unfortunately, the game really didn’t live up to the expectations set upon it by so many people. Quite a few major videogame publications gave Midnight Club very high praise and I really can’t figure out why.

The basic premise behind this game is that you’re a lowly cabby and you want to become a member of the mysterious group called the Midnight Club. The Midnight Club is a group of street-racers who live for the thrill of racing through the streets of whichever of the two cities in the game they reside in(New York or London).

There are two different main modes in Midnight Club, arcade and career. Arcade lets you jump right in the game and participate in a number of different types of races without having to go through a lot of the stuff found in career mode.

The first mode in Arcade is the joyride mode, where you’re given the liberty to simply cruise around either of the two cities in the game(which are both huge by the way). You can just drive around, look for short-cuts, try to run over pedestrians(none of them get injured, bleed or anything like that. This game has a T rating.), or try out a few of the different cars that won’t be unlocked in career mode until you earn them. You might want to practice going through traffic to, because some of your first cars will control like hell.

Want to practice racing against one of the elite members of The Midnight Club? Then you might want to try head-to-head mode. This is the mode where you can challenge one of the members of The Midnight Club to race against you. There will be a bunch of different way-points placed across the map and you must reach all of them before your opponent. You’ll want to practice here a lot before you try some of the things in career mode.

Then there’s ‘Waypoint’ and ‘Capture the Flag’. In ‘Waypoint’, you race against a group of racers instead of just one in an attempt to get through all of the waypoints first. Why they didn’t just take out both the waypoint and head-to-head modes and put in a single mode where you can select the number of racers I don’t know. Probably to brag about the number of modes. Anyway, capture the flag mode is pretty self-explanatory. You pick up the flag wherever it is on the map and head to the checkpoint with it. You’ll get a certain number of points for doing this, and the person with the most points when the timer in the top-right corner is up will be the winner. This mode get’s EXTREMELY boring after a while, and I can’t see you playing it more than once. The AI is really slow, so you shouldn’t have much of a problem beating them. However, capture the flag mode is pretty customizable, although it doesn’t really add that much fun. You can change the number of points you get for delivering the flag in capture the flag (you’ll probably set it to max), how long you want the timer to go for a mission, and the maximum scores. If your having trouble controlling your car and you crash a lot, you can set the regeneration of the vehicles up.

Some of the more fun things to customize are the time of day, the weather, traffic density and pedestrian density. These customization aren’t limited to just capture the flag. You can also set them for the joyride mode.

Arcade mode is actually somewhat fun once in a while, but there’s definitely not enough here to keep you coming back for long. That’s why there’s career mode, which requires a lot more commitment, patience, and a knack for all things boring and difficult.

After you’ve named yourself, you pretty much jump right into the game when you have to race against your first opponent, an aggressive man named Emilio. He talks in the 3rd person for some reason, and of course, taunts you and says you can’t beat him. Chances are, he’ll be right and you’ll lose, simply because you start out with a car that is slow and can’t turn for nothin’: The taxi. It’s going to take a loooong time for you to get good enough to beat someone with the taxi, but you’ll probably stop playing by then unless you’re a huge racing buff.

After this, you’ll be left on the streets to find out another racer to go against. What you need to do to get the attention of one of the members of The Midnight Club is follow them around and make yourself known to them. As soon as they realize that you’re following them around, they’ll take to you somehow.. I don’t know if it’s call you or just yell at you with a mega-horn, but they do something to communicate with you. They’ll taunt you if they get too far ahead of you or they’ll say something good about you if you can keep up. This has got to be one of the worst parts of the game. You have to follow around one of these street-racers FOREVER to get one of them to finally ask you to participate in a race. It’s really tedious and no fun at all. I know Angel Studios probably wanted to try and add a little more depth to the game by adding this, but in the end, all it does is add boredom and monotony to the game).

Okay, so you’ve gone through all of that junk and have a race set. Too bad you’re going to lose. The racers know whichever city they’re in like the back of they’re hand, and they’re not afraid to use little short-cuts that you might not have seen. It’s going to take a lot of practice to win, but when you finally do(or if you ever do, for that matter) win, you’ll feel a small sense of accomplishment. Then when you find out that you have to do the whole thing over again for each of the characters in the game, you’ll probably want to curl up in the fetal position and go cry somewhere.

For a game that came out at the launch of the PS2, the graphics are pretty snazzy. All of the cars are well-designed and reflect light pretty nicely. The cities both look pretty nice as well, although the same building designs are used a lot. That can be forgiven, though, since both the cities are really big. The character designs of all of the racers were also pretty well done, and does a pretty good job of avoiding most cliché’s. The water effects look especially good when it’s raining. Cars do bang up, but a bit unrealistically. It takes about half a dozen head-on collisions for your car to start showing some damage.

The voice-overs are well done for the most part, except for the pedestrians. If I hear another woman in that game yell out in one of the stupidest voices I’ve ever heard, “Somebody call an ambulance!!”, I may go postal. In London, the pedestrians have very fake-sounding British accents, and don’t forget to use stereotypical British words and phrases, such as “blimey” and “bloody hell”.

All of the crash-noises sound pretty authentic, as are the noises when you actually manage to hit a pedestrian(it’s not weird of me to say that those noises sound authentic, is it?). The various lights and such in the city also make appropriate clinking and clanking noises when you knock them down. Your car also sounds realistic when it’s cruising down the open road(or not so open, as the case usually is).

After reading the manual, it looks like the music in Midnight Club was licensed from various artists and record labels, and it shows for the most part. The music is above average, but you can definitely tell why you probably haven’t heard of many of the labels or artists of the songs in the game. Most of the time you won’t be able to listen to the music very well, for you’ll be too busy concentrating on the actual races at hand. I’m sure May Day records will become a huge, respectable music company... someday.

There’s definitely some replayability in the arcade mode, but not in career mode. You’ll go through career mode once and completely forget about it. If you really want to play some more, but don’t want to go through career mode again, I’m sure you could play one of the many modes in arcade again. As soon as you’ve played career mode for a while, you should be able to tell if you really like the game or hate it. If you still like the game after a few races, you’ll probably come back for more now and then. If you hate it.. well, you’ll hate it, and you’ll forget about the game.

Midnight Club is really a love it or hate it type of game. I have a friend who loved it, but I just couldn’t get into it. I couldn’t stand the constant practicing for career mode, and starting out with a car as bad as the taxi is just mean. Only pick this one up if you’re really REALLY into racing games. For the rest of you, just forget about it.

Foot-notes:

-It’s $20. That’s good.

-Arcade mode is pretty fun for the most part. There are a lot of different things to do in arcade mode, and you can pretty much do everything in it from the beginning.

-Career mode, on the other hand, is extremely boring. You need to practice a LOT to get good at all.

-For a launch game, the graphics are pretty spiffy.

-The music is above average, and so is the voice acting.. for the most part.

-The sounds are all good.

-Arcade mode gives the game some replayability, but you’re NOT going to want to go through career mode again.

-Without a fun career mode, Midnight Club leaves a lot to be desired.

-For hardcore racing buffs only.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/03, Updated 07/06/03