This year’s model boasts…
Of course, to assist in obtaining retail success for Midnight Club II, the game carries a nice little tag which says “From the makers of GTA” tag on the box. If you know your developers, Rockstar North (DMA Design) is responsible for GTA, while Rockstar San Diego (Angel Studios) is responsible for Midnight Club. Improvements to this version of Midnight Club include motorbikes, up to 8 players both over LAN and online using the Ethernet adaptor, three new cities and a variety of new cars.
I need some repairs for my Goggo mobile
Midnight Club II has two main play modes: Career and Arcade mode, but there are other modes such as the Race Editor (for placing your own checkpoints around the city) and multiplayer modes such as race mode and battle mode. The aim of the career mode is to become the champion of each city (Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo). You start off with a rather crappy car and must challenge each of the drivers in the city. To challenge a driver, you simply drive behind them and flash your high beam lights. Once the opposing driver notices you, they’ll tell you to follow them. Fall too far behind and you’ll be ridiculed, but keep up and you’ll be lead to a race. Win this race, and you’ll challenge the original driver to a one on one race (after a cutscene expressing their thoughts on you), and should you win that race, you’ll win his/her car. Lather, rinse and repeat for each driver in the city until you’re the champ, in which case you move on to the next city.
Arcade mode is separated into two separate portions – Cruise and Circuit. Selecting Cruise mode will let you casually drive around the city of your choice in your selected vehicle. Circuit lets you select a track from a series of predetermined circuits and race a selection of opponents over a series of laps. If you don’t like the predefined circuits, you can create your own using the Race Editor. Just pick a city, plonk down some checkpoints and you’re away. You can use these custom tracks in multiplayer mode as well. Multiplayer is broken into Race mode and Battle mode. Race mode is self explanatory, but Battle mode places you and your friends into some interesting predicaments. Detonate requires the players to find a detonator, and run off to a trigger point which will allow them to set the detonator off without being smashed to bits by the other players. Capture the Flag requires players to pick up the opponents flag and take it back to their base. Players can prevent their flags from being stolen by attempting to tag the player who stole it. If you can’t muster enough friends with PS2’s to play over a LAN and have access to the Playstation 2 Ethernet adaptor and a broadband connection, you can play Midnight Club II online.
Midnight Club II’s portrayal of street racing relies on an arcade-like formula – drive around tracks running through checkpoints, taking shortcuts where possible and occasionally pulling off a big stunt. Arcade play results in a substitution of much of the realism for ease of control. Difficult tasks such as weight distribution when landing, and over/understeer when turning are made incredibly easy. One of the main strengths of Midnight Club II is its sense of speed, a crucial component in a street racing game. Riding a motorbike or driving a fast car feels the way one would expect. While Midnight Club II may sound as if it plays alright, it hits a major speed bump when the AI is brought into the equation. Rubberband AI is something many of us at PALGN despise, and Midnight Club II is another offender when it comes to using this system of AI. Not only does the AI get stupid speed boosts when they get too far behind (or at other stupid times), they magically respawn far ahead of you after causing a traffic accident and getting stuck (which they seem to do on purpose) – should you happen to get stuck your only hope of winning is to start again.
The other main strength (should you be able to put up with the simplicity, lack of variety and poor AI) of Midnight Club II is the amount of time you will get out of the game. The main career mode will last you a good 10-15 hours (depending on how good you are), while the combination of Race Editor and 8 player online multiplayer should last you until either a sequel or something better comes out.
Stop flashing your high beams
It’d be nice if all street racing games were able to produce great graphics and a fast, stable frame rate. Unfortunately, Burnout 2 and Project Gotham will remain the only games which achieve such a feat – Midnight Club II’s graphics, while having some nice effects, just don’t stack up to the other games on the market. The cities are big, and the textures are fairly clear and varied, but the overall framer rate is fairly unstable, hovering between about 20 and 30 frames per second. Special effects such as reflections and lighting are a mixed bag; while the cars themselves look pretty good, they’re far too reflective (and the reflections aren’t real time) and the headlight effects aren’t very convincing at all – not too good for a game set entirely at night.
After the excellent use of licensing in the GTA soundtrack, you’d think that Rockstar might have put a little effort into the soundtrack for Midnight Club II, but alas all we receive is styles of music relevant to the location you are racing in at the time. Your opponents will consistently banter over the radio, not hesitating to take the piss out of you. The problem here is that stereotypes are over used and the dialog is poor to say the least. Sound effects are above par, with all the whooshing, revving and tire squealing noises you need.
Crash and burn
Midnight Club II certainly started out as a fairly interesting game, but the more you begin to play, the more its various faults and inconsistencies begin to show, and the more you will become frustrated. Some of you will probably like this game, but it is clearly obvious that there are much stronger street racing games available across all formats. If you need an online racing game for the PS2, this is the only one you’re going to get for quite a while, so you might want to give it a rental just for that.
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