Midnight Feast (Midnight Club II (PC))

Member Name: JPShooter

Product:	Midnight Club II (PC)
Date:	24/05/04 (58 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun racing, Nice graphics, Nice functionality

Disadvantages: Very hard, Needs a wheel to get the most out of it, A little bit twitchy

Those of you who play video games regularly may have played Need For Speed Underground (and being as it's sold more than 6 million copies the chances are you have) and are looking for a similar game, Midnight Club 2 (MC2) is worth your consideration. The style of gameplay is very similar, as are the graphics and the music. Except MC2 has a few more features than Need For Speed Underground (NFSU), like a race editor and a very non-linear style of racing.

Intro
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Installation and setup is easy. Once you start there are a few options for gameplay; one is 'cruise' which is just a case of you driving around the city alone with no race or checkpoints. This is simply to familiarise yourself with the city and listen to some choons. Another is career mode, where you participate in races according to the career level you are on. You get videos introducing some of the main characters, who don't speak much but you do hear what they're thinking, which is sometimes pretty funny. Another mode is Multiplayer, allowing you to race against other over a LAN or across the internet. you can also create and edit tracks and races in the editor mode, which adds a bit of longevity to the game.

General Gameplay
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The basic storyline behind the career mode in MC2 is that you are an upstart racer, looking for a chance in the world of underground racing. You get your chance, and then you have to drive and win to get on in the game. The game advances in a percentage system, as you may expect in a Rockstar game (who brought you Grand Theft Auto 3 & Vice City, and Max Payne 2). You begin in Los Angeles, with easy races and easy opponents. There are no difficulty settings, it just gets harder as you go along. The races are not on set tracks, they are a series of checkpoints around the city. Some races are simple races, first through all the checkpoints in a specific order, but some are checkpoint r
aces where you can get through all the checkpoints in any order you like, as well as other different race types. Now the crucial thing here is the route you use for the races, as this is the difference between winning and losing. After finishing certain races, you move on Paris and finally Tokyo. Every time you win a race or set of races, you win the opponent's car you were trying to beat. By the end you amass quite a collection, and can choose whichever car you would like to use at the start of each race. You also race motorbikes, with their own individual tricks compared to street cars. The path to the finish is long and very hard, and took me many hours to complete, so you may find yourself very frustrated towards the end (as I have on many occasions). One simple mistake in a race and that is it, no more chance of winning.

Controls
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The controls, using a steering wheel in may case, were pretty decent, if a little sensitive. The game incorporates quite a few gizmos you can use whilst driving, such as a nitro boost (the amount of which you can use will vary from car to car), slipstream turbo and burnout (where you hold the handbrake whilst accelerating to get a good start). The game supports force feedback, and it is OK but you don't really get a feel for the car in a way that you perhaps might; there is also no difference in feedback between the different cars. You can also customise your controls to change radio stations and volume of the radio.

Graphics
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The graphics are pretty impressive. Bearing in mind all the races take place at night, reflections and shadows have to be dealt with all the time, and these are done pretty well. The cars are nicely rendered, but the game does not have a license for any manufacturers, so expect random names and models here (although sometimes it is easy to spot when a car is based on a real-life counterpart). The environments you travel through a
re pretty varied, and you find yourself underground racing through caverns, or up the side of the glass building in Paris, or through signposts in Tokyo. Due to the nature of the races being based in the same city, you get to see a lot of the same places. However, the circumstances in which you find yourself there are often very different.

Sound
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The sound of the engines are pretty good, and do vary reasonably well from car to car (and bike). The soundtrack is packed with proper tracks from proper artists, however if you've heard of any of them you're a music nut. But who cares, because as Rockstar did with GTA3 and Vice City, you can use your own mp3 files in the game and listen to them. This is pretty easy as you just put them in the particular directory it specifies. You can also change volume levels for music and sound effects so you can have it what volume mix you like.

Conclusion
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If you liked NFSU, you will like Midnight Club 2. If you like general racing games, I'm sure you'll like it too. However it is a very hard game to complete, and in order to get the most out of the mulitplayer you need to complete it to obtain all the cars. So persevere and you will reap the rewards. It's a bit of a pick-up and play racer, or it would be if it was easier. In order to get through most of the races you have to drive them a few times to know the quickest route. but with the music up and the engine singing it's hard not to enjoy it, and it's either on budget or coming soon to budget, which means you can't afford not to buy.

Summary: