"Definite faults, but definantly good"

Hey, this is Chris again. I'm here to tell you about a great racer that, while not perfect, still manages to entertain the common gamer for quite some time. Lets start.

Graphics(8)- lets start off with the games strong point, and down fall. MC(Midnight Club) does bring some very cool scenery and cars to the show, but still feels lacking. You mainly race in either New York or London. Each city is accurately modeled with real time lighting and realistic traffic. However, Rockstar didn't do a very good job masking pop-up. In fact that's all you'll see, things just appearing and popping up. It doesn't really hamper the game too badly, but it would have been nice for Rockstar to make it harder to notice. Another down side to the visuals are the cities. Everything looks like it was cut and pasted on. It makes the cities come off cheap looking. But besides these set backs this game has plenty of great looking cars and huge environments to offer.

Audio(6)- a note-worthy annoyance in this game is the audio. While car chases, police sirens, crashes, and people getting run over sound pretty respectable, everything else sucks. For one thing the only soundtrack this game has to offer is one never ending techno beat. For some reason I don't get sick of it, in fact it sort of keeps things rolling... but never the less somebody will get sick of it. And it could be you. Besides couldn't they have put just a few more beats in this game. Another extreme annoyance is the character voices. Whenever you start a race with some famous street racer they make generic comments that sound like your baby brother making fun of in there stupid and unintelligent way. The comments are cheap, annoying, and everything else you might and will hate. But besides all this the audio performs well.

Story(7)- it's a pretty basic story. Your a new guy who wants to join an under ground group who races at night. There club is called (you guessed it) Midnight Club. As you race you get more and more recognition, and more cars. Still over all the story is pretty thin, and lame. But what are ya gonna do. It's a racer not a movie.

Gameplay(9)- this is MC most redeeming quality. Theres tons of things to do in this game. You can race in arcade mode or just go for a joy ride. Try and find new cars throughout the city, or play capture the flag with a buddy. You can customize lots of things before you start too. Such as weather and car density, or how many cars are on the road. If you put it on its highest setting there can be an enormous amount of traffic on screen at once. All in all your unlikely to get bored playing this game.

Replayability(9)- as mentioned above, your more likely to get carpal tunnel syndrome before getting bored playing this game. You wont be able to get enough of running people over, backing up, and over and so on and so forth. If your going to buy this game for one reason it should be for its replayability.

Rent or Buy- depending on how much of a race fan your are you should probably rent it first. But if your a die hard driving machine at core, than theres no doubt that you need this game pretty much right away.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10 | Originally Posted: 02/20/02, Updated 02/20/02

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