Post by VRoom4 on Oct 21, 2007 10:37:51 GMT -5
Found some pretty good articles, hella long tho, so hope ya don't mind readin.
Plonking myself down onto the very generously sized sofa inside the media room of Rockstar Games' Sydney office, it wasn't long before I was being pummelled with some key facts surrounding Midnight Club LA and its predecessors. Fact One: Freedom – there's plenty of it. An open world giving players huge areas to race within - and in between checkpoints, cruise the streets to your heart's content. Fact Two: The original Midnight Club sold 2 million worldwide. Midnight Club 2 sold 3 million. Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition presently stands at 5.5 million with sales continuing. Fact Three: The Midnight Club series were the first to introduce the open-city illegal street racing concept while managing to remain consistent with that philosophy through each iteration.
The goal for this next-gen addition was to make the most visceral, fast-paced illegal street racing experience possible within an open world. With the caveat that what I was about to witness was early code, with most elements yet to receive a whole heap of tweaking while other aspects not even yet implemented, it was time to turn on the pleasingly large LCD screen, crank up the amp and start racing.
The very first scene is of a highly detailed top-down view of a portion of LA. Imagine a Google satellite map set around the 200m mark and you'll be close. In a visual trick that had my man nipples tingling with excitement, the camera suddenly dropped in a headlong rush towards the ground, finally planting itself seamlessly behind the car. When I say seamlessly, I mean just that. Two seconds and with a low grumble from the sub-woofer, you're behind the car ready to cruise about the town. The car in question is a Mitsubishi 3000 GT, a classic tuner type muscle car with all the tight angles and menacingly impressive lines fit for the wide streets of LA. Up close, it's excruciatingly beautiful. Almost to my embarrassment I found myself reaching out, wanting to let my hands glide over its pearlescent exterior, delicately grasp its handle then enter its invitingly plush and warm interior. Focusing back to the moment, each one of these highly reflective monsters, while clocking in at over 100k polygons per car, receive a nice dose of style by the game's continuing association with Dub magazine, a popular and influential rag on automotive styles since 2000.
It's worth pointing out the level of authenticity of the game's locations, with many of LA's more famous landmarks such as The House of Blues and Miyagi's making an appearance. While not a clinical representation of the entire city, I was assured that for those having previously visited the city or having watched the endless amount of movies using LA as the backdrop (West Hollywood to be exact), cruising past the odd key location will help navigating through the large expanse. While on the topic of LA, the mix of narrow but mostly wide streets makes the perfect setting for the game's premise of illegal racing, and it's worth noting the map size for this release will be bigger than all three of the previous games combined. Yes, big is in fact best.
For once, the term 'seamless' isn't just some catchy phrase cooked up in PR's wet fantasy, it actually stands for a fluid, interruption-free experience. As was plainly evident by the unfolding demonstration, it's about minimizing the fuss versus maximizing the racing. In fact, that seems the fundamental aspect to the game: case in point being the initial stages of setting up a race. From the overhead map to finding yourself behind the steering wheel, it can be a matter of mere moments before you spot the 'hook car', a specific vehicle at which you'll need to flash your high beam to start the racing cycle. With a very obvious smoking coloured flare rising in the near distance and a yellow indicator also showing the direction, you speed towards it (which itself seems like a mini race), where starts the race proper. Once the race ends, you're quickly shown any cash and reputation points gained then it's right back to the cruising. No load times, no series of menus stopping play between modes at all; smooth and painless.
Besides the fact that it's a pleasing pastime (more on actually how very pleasing it is in a moment) racing has its rewards. The more reputation points you gain from races, the more races will be unlocked. The entire map, large as it is, is free to be explored straight from the beginning, so I'm assuming simply wandering the vast network of streets will easily chew up a few hours. In consistent fashion within the genre, the better your accomplishments, the better your rewards which in this case translates to greater purchasing power. Unlike the previous titles though, winning each race isn't as vital, with the amount of rep points gained determined by the difficulty as well as the final placing in the race. Rep points accrued determine how the game unlocks itself. Whether that means better cars or multiple levels of car accessories, that remains to be seen as Rockstar remains tight-lipped about certain subjects.
It seems two words nicely frame the experience of Midnight Club LA: seamless and visceral. Enough with seamless, let's do visceral. One of its meanings is "an experience characterized by or dealing with coarse or base emotions". Besides the fact that I wanted to head slap the Rockstar guys for stealing all the playtime (how's that for a base emotion), sitting back and watching the screen square on was quite sensational and in one sense perfectly captured the game's promise: the mindlessly perfect racing game.
Watching the game being played was a riveting experience in itself, helped in no small part by the very impressive audio/visual setup. Sound-wise the game's a thunderous cacophony of low bass notes shaking the internals better than any chicken vindaloo could ever hope to achieve, packed with screaming red-lined engines, plenty of high end shrills from grinding metal impacting with a host of objects to the sound of stressed tires chewing up the asphalt in all manner of wicked ways.
In terms of destructibility, apart from the seemingly indestructible buildings (a shame considering how much fun crashing into a famous landmark such as Miyagi's would be) everything else seems willing to collapse under a spray of sparks while your car seems immune to normal levels of damage. The amounts of damage I saw would normally result in a steaming, twisted wreck with car and human fluids dripping slowly onto the hot LA asphalt, but there's nothing more than a twisted frame and the odd scratch. While this may make a few racing aficionados twitch in their sleep in horror, it's just another mechanism by which players will spend more time racing rather than repairing. This ideology is realized by a unique repair system called 'Quickfix'. Hit a garage, press one button and its all fixed. Mind you, that nice exterior is now ruined with undecorated panels.
Visually, it's what I imagine a kick to the head would feel like, followed by a solid twist of the scrotum, capped off with copious amounts of booze to dull the constant throbbing. Powered by the RAGE engine (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine) which is in fact the same one used within GTA IV, it's hard not to be mesmerized by the insane amount of detail being pumped out of the screen. Attention to detail comes in small but beautifully crafted parcels. Panning the camera around to watch the driver being viciously jolted within his seat was more fun than I'd previously thought possible. Even activating the nitrous and watching the visual representation of the massive g-forces being piled onto the driver with the vision slowly narrowing into darkness was equally as impressive. Perhaps just as thrilling was seeing a super-cool yellow Lamborghini Gallardo clip another car while rocketing around a wide corner, resulting in what was obviously a nod to Hollywood-style stunts with the car spinning a few times in the air, parts flying in all directions before finally coming to a screeching rest on its roof. I also need to mention the first person view as shown by the game's very sexy new camera angles. Within the cockpit view, everything moves accordingly – arms swinging the wheels and shifting gears, dashboard filled with moving dials and everything outside moving with uncomfortable solidity and intensity. Beautiful stuff.
Midnight Club LA appears to be the evolutionary pinnacle of the series, drawing together all of the tried and tested elements that made the past titles so successful, adding in newer next-gen features that other titles will find hard pressed to match, certainly within 2008. And who better to offer what easily looks like a genre-defining racing title than the originators of the concept. With the amount of confidence oozing out of Rockstar, they know they have a winner and it's their intention that as many others know it too. This is definitely one title to watch out for.
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GC'07: Midnight Club: Los Angeles Preview
Rockstar San Diego travels up the coast of California as it prepares to deliver the first Midnight Club of the next-generation...
Having already powered its way onto Xbox 360 once already with the sublime Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, Rockstar San Diego is now just months away from delivering the next instalment of its bread and butter Midnight Club franchise (on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3). Last seen on the previous crop of consoles as the DUB Edition (not counting the spin off Remix Edition that included the fourth city of Tokyo), Midnight Club has already sped through cities including Detroit, Paris, and San Diego - now the studio has its sights on returning to the City of Angels herself (last visited in Midnight Club II). TVG took a short tour of the latest representation of LA during Game Convention 2007 in Leipzig.
Described by Rockstar as one of the most ambitious titles they've attempted to date, Midnight Club: Los Angeles' metropolis is larger than the three cities of DUB Edition put together. Freed from loading times as players race from Hollywood to Downtown and west to Sunset Boulevard and Wiltshire, this playground of street-racing is sure to excite not only fans of the series but attract newcomers with its sheer breadth and evolution over previous instalments. At its core, Midnight Club: Los Angeles continues to build upon the foundations laid down by the likes of DUB Edition, with masses of street-racing and huge swathes of customisation built into every facet of the cars and bikes squeezed onto the disc. Cruising around the mean streets of Los Angeles lies at the heart of the game, with 'Hookman' races (flashing headlights to throw down a challenge to potential opponents) and other race types available to players across the city. Players won't be held back by poor performances this time around though; unlike past Midnight Club instalments, Los Angeles will see the introduction of Reputation Points, which can be exchanged to unlock certain cars and parts. Cold hard cash will still be the driving force behind pimping your ride, but the addition of Reputation Points will at least mean that the breadth of parts and cars can be achieved over time.
Like both Table Tennis and Grand Theft Auto IV, Midnight Club is being built with Rockstar's proprietary RAGE Engine, once more giving a clear demonstration of just how scalable and flexible it actually is. One of the most powerful elements demonstrating San Diego's intent on creating the next landmark instalment of the franchise rests with the camera system. Dynamically shifting angles and zooming into and out of the car as player's scream through the streets and past recognisable landmarks like the Staples Center (home to the LA Lakers) and Capital Records, creating a high octane, visceral, and gutsy experience. The sensation of speed has never been lacking in the series, something that has always been helped by the light trails pouring off sodium and neon lighting in the night-time settings. The fact that Rockstar is compounding this with such a smooth flowing dynamic camera merely strengthens this already powerful feature of the game. Besides a camera system that already astounds, Rockstar also unveiled that Midnight Club: Los Angeles will include a cockpit view for the very first time, something that will undoubtedly increase the level of immersive street-racing for players.
As for the special abilities featured in DUB (Roar, Zone and Agro), Rockstar are currently keeping quiet. It certainly seems that the team in California is dedicated to delivering Midnight Club: Los Angeles as a game firmly set in a near-real world, so perhaps they won't make an appearance. The sense of speed offered by the Nitrous should at least satisfy fans of the series if the abilities don't come back however.
Despite continuing the 'Midnight Club' brand, Midnight Club: Los Angeles will be the first instalment in the series to feature a full twenty-four hour day/night cycle, dictated by an in-game clock. Three races were demonstrated in the hushed Midnight Club room, taking in three distinct times between dawn and dusk - the hues of the sky and the distinctly subtle changes especially impressive along with a blinding use of HDR and bloom lighting. More than just a superficial change of lighting though, the new cycle also means that traffic levels will rise and fall across the city depending on the time of day. Whether there'll be any change in weather conditions is unclear, though given LA's distinct lack of variety beyond sunshine or overcast conditions in the real world, don't expect snow drifts to make an appearance in the final release...
Three cars were raced through the mean streets, surely just an excruciatingly small percentage of the final game's vehicle list. From the Mitsubishi 3000 GT to the '69 Mustang Boss (an example of one of the game's muscle cars) and the 2004 Lamborghini Gallardo Roadster, Midnight Club: Los Angeles looks set to include a full spread of street-racing vehicles, though a demonstration of how the bikes will perform was held back. Being several months away from release, some elements continue to be Work in Progress, including damage modelling and a lack of pedestrians. Scratches to the paint work were the extent of the car damage, though hopefully San Diego will deliver something more devastating come the day of release next year.
Whilst a tour of the body shops wasn't on the cards during the GC'07 demo, Rockstar did at least show how players will be able to rapidly repair their vehicles without having to return to the garages that dot the city (though driving to the Midnight Club version of Paint 'n' Spray is still an option). Choosing a quick repair may solve one problem, but it'll also mean that replacement parts won't get fitted with various decals and paint jobs instantly - they'll be primed however, making the vehicles look like the sort of rude boy cars that drive around urban areas in the real world.
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PAX 2007 Preview
Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the next entry in the long-running street racing series. Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the first entry in the series to come out for next-gen hardware, and showcases some truly fantastic graphics and intensely fast racing. The game presents the open-world arcade-style racing system that the series has been known for and adds some new elements to make it an experience worth jumping back in to.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles was on display at Rockstar’s booth at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo, and some of the game’s developers were on hand to talk about the game, scheduled to release in the first half of 2008 on Xbox 360 and PS3. The game will take place in the city of LA (obviously), which will be three times the size of any previous city featured in a Midnight Club title. While it won’t be a 100 percent accurate representation of the city, astute gamers will be able to find their way around by using authentic landmarks like the Hollywood Hills and Rodeo Drive.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Xbox 360 screenshots
The environment will also work dynamically, with elements like changing time of day and weather conditions. These conditions will change naturally as you play the game (the night will last a little bit longer than the day, since that’s when the developers feel that the game works best), or should you want certain conditions for a race, you can go through the menu and change them yourself.
However, aside from the next-gen presentation, the basic fundamentals are still very much in play here. The game is about the same things that it was before, meaning presenting an all-out approach to illegal street racing. You’ll fly through the city, flashing your brights at other street racers to take them on, avoiding cops, and basically living the street racing life. The checkpoints are now fewer and far between, making it so the player should be able to craft their own shortcuts to get from one section of the race to another
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Xbox 360 screenshots
The default camera is the cinematic view, which is not unwieldy like they are in other games, but actually quite functional. It’s actually pretty cool to hit the NoS and have the camera pan down to the side of your car, watching the pavement scream by. For the first time, the team has implemented a cockpit view with a full PoV system that lets you look all around the interior. This is a nice touch, considering that the devs have also implemented an upgrade system where you can not only customize the exterior of your car, but the interior as well. The team also stated that sport bikes would indeed be back for Midnight Club: Los Angeles, with an agreement with manufacturers like Kawasaki and Ducati being crafted for the game’s release.
The game will also implement one-touch multiplayer, allowing them to switch from a single-player environment to a multiplayer mode seamlessly.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Xbox 360 screenshots
Graphically, the game will definitely live up to some next-gen potential, with the aforementioned huge and detailed city. The cars themselves also already look great, boasting 100,000 polygons a piece with great racing effects in place, like motion blur and bloom lighting.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles is shaping up to be a fine addition to the series and a true next-gen street racing game. Fans of the series will definitely want to check it out next year.
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Rockstar big willy Sam Houser has said that for Midnight Club: Los Angeles its San Diego studio is looking to "redefine the idea of a completely immersive racing game experience, both offline and online." Them's some mighty ambitious words, but can they actually translate into something meaningful for avid motor-headed gamers?
After a fast and furious demo of the street-savvy street racer, we'd have to say that things are looking very, very sexy indeed and Rockstar certainly seems to be hurtling the right way along the immersion highway, thanks to gorgeous visuals, some nifty camera techniques and, most important of all, the freedom to cruise and race without stalling the action.
Big Screen, Main Screen
Designed for optimum foot-to-the-floor thrills - as opposed to serving as a pinpoint street map for LA locals - the City of Angels promises to provide an irresistible and absolutely enormous arena for speed freaks. The straight roads, tight corners and skinny alleyways we saw in the demo screamed "Drive me hard and spank me with your burning rubber." Not literally, though. That was just a lady's voice in our head.
Already we can't wait to sample some of LA's other locales - cruising Santa Monica at sunset or racing through the Hollywood Hills at night (did we mention the new dynamic day/night cycle?) should be quite a ride.
And even though we had to take the role of backseat spectator (strictly no hands-on), the ride was a blast. Fast, thrilling and - buzz word alert - cinematic. Yes, if you choose the aptly named 'cinematic' perspective, high-drama moments are given the visual va-va-voom they so absolutely deserve. A bracing acceleration, burst of nitrous, lift of air, drifting round corners, catching slipstream - all prompt Hollywood tricks that look more than trashy gimmicks, seeming to add more weight, more substance, more velocity to the on-screen motor storm.
How those all-important races are instigated will be paramount to the 'completely immersive' experience, of course. Rockstar is looking to make the transition from laidback cruise to drunk-on-adrenaline driving a seamless one. We witnessed the trusty 'flash lights at challenger' technique, followed by a pre-race race to the starting line, the race itself and then straight back to cruising with a bare minimum of bother and certainly no deviation from the game world.
We were told that there would be around eight ways to hook up with other drivers and enter races in this satisfyingly smoothalicious style. For what it's worth, our money's on a device in the same vein as GTA IV's Whiz cell phone making an appearance, allowing the player to make the call - whenever they want - to other racers in the city and hitting them with the challenge of an automobile throw down.
Big Screen, Main Screen
There were some bullet-point features specifically highlighted in the demo that didn't really tent our trousers. The cockpit view looked lovely - a nice option, certainly - but nothing we haven't seen before. The awarding of - yoinks - 'Rep points' after racing sounded cliché and did make us wince ever so slightly. And we also need convincing that vehicle damage isn't merely a superfluous distraction.
It's always difficult to get a feel for a racing game when somebody else is doing the driving. If the handling's all to poop it really doesn't matter how beautiful the bodywork is. After giving Midnight Club: Los Angeles a close showroom eyeballing, though, we can confirm that it looks the absolute business, from the sexy car models through to the LA streets, and has all the makings of a stylish, street racing classic.
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Wow, longer than I remember it being..
Plonking myself down onto the very generously sized sofa inside the media room of Rockstar Games' Sydney office, it wasn't long before I was being pummelled with some key facts surrounding Midnight Club LA and its predecessors. Fact One: Freedom – there's plenty of it. An open world giving players huge areas to race within - and in between checkpoints, cruise the streets to your heart's content. Fact Two: The original Midnight Club sold 2 million worldwide. Midnight Club 2 sold 3 million. Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition presently stands at 5.5 million with sales continuing. Fact Three: The Midnight Club series were the first to introduce the open-city illegal street racing concept while managing to remain consistent with that philosophy through each iteration.
The goal for this next-gen addition was to make the most visceral, fast-paced illegal street racing experience possible within an open world. With the caveat that what I was about to witness was early code, with most elements yet to receive a whole heap of tweaking while other aspects not even yet implemented, it was time to turn on the pleasingly large LCD screen, crank up the amp and start racing.
The very first scene is of a highly detailed top-down view of a portion of LA. Imagine a Google satellite map set around the 200m mark and you'll be close. In a visual trick that had my man nipples tingling with excitement, the camera suddenly dropped in a headlong rush towards the ground, finally planting itself seamlessly behind the car. When I say seamlessly, I mean just that. Two seconds and with a low grumble from the sub-woofer, you're behind the car ready to cruise about the town. The car in question is a Mitsubishi 3000 GT, a classic tuner type muscle car with all the tight angles and menacingly impressive lines fit for the wide streets of LA. Up close, it's excruciatingly beautiful. Almost to my embarrassment I found myself reaching out, wanting to let my hands glide over its pearlescent exterior, delicately grasp its handle then enter its invitingly plush and warm interior. Focusing back to the moment, each one of these highly reflective monsters, while clocking in at over 100k polygons per car, receive a nice dose of style by the game's continuing association with Dub magazine, a popular and influential rag on automotive styles since 2000.
It's worth pointing out the level of authenticity of the game's locations, with many of LA's more famous landmarks such as The House of Blues and Miyagi's making an appearance. While not a clinical representation of the entire city, I was assured that for those having previously visited the city or having watched the endless amount of movies using LA as the backdrop (West Hollywood to be exact), cruising past the odd key location will help navigating through the large expanse. While on the topic of LA, the mix of narrow but mostly wide streets makes the perfect setting for the game's premise of illegal racing, and it's worth noting the map size for this release will be bigger than all three of the previous games combined. Yes, big is in fact best.
For once, the term 'seamless' isn't just some catchy phrase cooked up in PR's wet fantasy, it actually stands for a fluid, interruption-free experience. As was plainly evident by the unfolding demonstration, it's about minimizing the fuss versus maximizing the racing. In fact, that seems the fundamental aspect to the game: case in point being the initial stages of setting up a race. From the overhead map to finding yourself behind the steering wheel, it can be a matter of mere moments before you spot the 'hook car', a specific vehicle at which you'll need to flash your high beam to start the racing cycle. With a very obvious smoking coloured flare rising in the near distance and a yellow indicator also showing the direction, you speed towards it (which itself seems like a mini race), where starts the race proper. Once the race ends, you're quickly shown any cash and reputation points gained then it's right back to the cruising. No load times, no series of menus stopping play between modes at all; smooth and painless.
Besides the fact that it's a pleasing pastime (more on actually how very pleasing it is in a moment) racing has its rewards. The more reputation points you gain from races, the more races will be unlocked. The entire map, large as it is, is free to be explored straight from the beginning, so I'm assuming simply wandering the vast network of streets will easily chew up a few hours. In consistent fashion within the genre, the better your accomplishments, the better your rewards which in this case translates to greater purchasing power. Unlike the previous titles though, winning each race isn't as vital, with the amount of rep points gained determined by the difficulty as well as the final placing in the race. Rep points accrued determine how the game unlocks itself. Whether that means better cars or multiple levels of car accessories, that remains to be seen as Rockstar remains tight-lipped about certain subjects.
It seems two words nicely frame the experience of Midnight Club LA: seamless and visceral. Enough with seamless, let's do visceral. One of its meanings is "an experience characterized by or dealing with coarse or base emotions". Besides the fact that I wanted to head slap the Rockstar guys for stealing all the playtime (how's that for a base emotion), sitting back and watching the screen square on was quite sensational and in one sense perfectly captured the game's promise: the mindlessly perfect racing game.
Watching the game being played was a riveting experience in itself, helped in no small part by the very impressive audio/visual setup. Sound-wise the game's a thunderous cacophony of low bass notes shaking the internals better than any chicken vindaloo could ever hope to achieve, packed with screaming red-lined engines, plenty of high end shrills from grinding metal impacting with a host of objects to the sound of stressed tires chewing up the asphalt in all manner of wicked ways.
In terms of destructibility, apart from the seemingly indestructible buildings (a shame considering how much fun crashing into a famous landmark such as Miyagi's would be) everything else seems willing to collapse under a spray of sparks while your car seems immune to normal levels of damage. The amounts of damage I saw would normally result in a steaming, twisted wreck with car and human fluids dripping slowly onto the hot LA asphalt, but there's nothing more than a twisted frame and the odd scratch. While this may make a few racing aficionados twitch in their sleep in horror, it's just another mechanism by which players will spend more time racing rather than repairing. This ideology is realized by a unique repair system called 'Quickfix'. Hit a garage, press one button and its all fixed. Mind you, that nice exterior is now ruined with undecorated panels.
Visually, it's what I imagine a kick to the head would feel like, followed by a solid twist of the scrotum, capped off with copious amounts of booze to dull the constant throbbing. Powered by the RAGE engine (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine) which is in fact the same one used within GTA IV, it's hard not to be mesmerized by the insane amount of detail being pumped out of the screen. Attention to detail comes in small but beautifully crafted parcels. Panning the camera around to watch the driver being viciously jolted within his seat was more fun than I'd previously thought possible. Even activating the nitrous and watching the visual representation of the massive g-forces being piled onto the driver with the vision slowly narrowing into darkness was equally as impressive. Perhaps just as thrilling was seeing a super-cool yellow Lamborghini Gallardo clip another car while rocketing around a wide corner, resulting in what was obviously a nod to Hollywood-style stunts with the car spinning a few times in the air, parts flying in all directions before finally coming to a screeching rest on its roof. I also need to mention the first person view as shown by the game's very sexy new camera angles. Within the cockpit view, everything moves accordingly – arms swinging the wheels and shifting gears, dashboard filled with moving dials and everything outside moving with uncomfortable solidity and intensity. Beautiful stuff.
Midnight Club LA appears to be the evolutionary pinnacle of the series, drawing together all of the tried and tested elements that made the past titles so successful, adding in newer next-gen features that other titles will find hard pressed to match, certainly within 2008. And who better to offer what easily looks like a genre-defining racing title than the originators of the concept. With the amount of confidence oozing out of Rockstar, they know they have a winner and it's their intention that as many others know it too. This is definitely one title to watch out for.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GC'07: Midnight Club: Los Angeles Preview
Rockstar San Diego travels up the coast of California as it prepares to deliver the first Midnight Club of the next-generation...
Having already powered its way onto Xbox 360 once already with the sublime Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis, Rockstar San Diego is now just months away from delivering the next instalment of its bread and butter Midnight Club franchise (on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3). Last seen on the previous crop of consoles as the DUB Edition (not counting the spin off Remix Edition that included the fourth city of Tokyo), Midnight Club has already sped through cities including Detroit, Paris, and San Diego - now the studio has its sights on returning to the City of Angels herself (last visited in Midnight Club II). TVG took a short tour of the latest representation of LA during Game Convention 2007 in Leipzig.
Described by Rockstar as one of the most ambitious titles they've attempted to date, Midnight Club: Los Angeles' metropolis is larger than the three cities of DUB Edition put together. Freed from loading times as players race from Hollywood to Downtown and west to Sunset Boulevard and Wiltshire, this playground of street-racing is sure to excite not only fans of the series but attract newcomers with its sheer breadth and evolution over previous instalments. At its core, Midnight Club: Los Angeles continues to build upon the foundations laid down by the likes of DUB Edition, with masses of street-racing and huge swathes of customisation built into every facet of the cars and bikes squeezed onto the disc. Cruising around the mean streets of Los Angeles lies at the heart of the game, with 'Hookman' races (flashing headlights to throw down a challenge to potential opponents) and other race types available to players across the city. Players won't be held back by poor performances this time around though; unlike past Midnight Club instalments, Los Angeles will see the introduction of Reputation Points, which can be exchanged to unlock certain cars and parts. Cold hard cash will still be the driving force behind pimping your ride, but the addition of Reputation Points will at least mean that the breadth of parts and cars can be achieved over time.
Like both Table Tennis and Grand Theft Auto IV, Midnight Club is being built with Rockstar's proprietary RAGE Engine, once more giving a clear demonstration of just how scalable and flexible it actually is. One of the most powerful elements demonstrating San Diego's intent on creating the next landmark instalment of the franchise rests with the camera system. Dynamically shifting angles and zooming into and out of the car as player's scream through the streets and past recognisable landmarks like the Staples Center (home to the LA Lakers) and Capital Records, creating a high octane, visceral, and gutsy experience. The sensation of speed has never been lacking in the series, something that has always been helped by the light trails pouring off sodium and neon lighting in the night-time settings. The fact that Rockstar is compounding this with such a smooth flowing dynamic camera merely strengthens this already powerful feature of the game. Besides a camera system that already astounds, Rockstar also unveiled that Midnight Club: Los Angeles will include a cockpit view for the very first time, something that will undoubtedly increase the level of immersive street-racing for players.
As for the special abilities featured in DUB (Roar, Zone and Agro), Rockstar are currently keeping quiet. It certainly seems that the team in California is dedicated to delivering Midnight Club: Los Angeles as a game firmly set in a near-real world, so perhaps they won't make an appearance. The sense of speed offered by the Nitrous should at least satisfy fans of the series if the abilities don't come back however.
Despite continuing the 'Midnight Club' brand, Midnight Club: Los Angeles will be the first instalment in the series to feature a full twenty-four hour day/night cycle, dictated by an in-game clock. Three races were demonstrated in the hushed Midnight Club room, taking in three distinct times between dawn and dusk - the hues of the sky and the distinctly subtle changes especially impressive along with a blinding use of HDR and bloom lighting. More than just a superficial change of lighting though, the new cycle also means that traffic levels will rise and fall across the city depending on the time of day. Whether there'll be any change in weather conditions is unclear, though given LA's distinct lack of variety beyond sunshine or overcast conditions in the real world, don't expect snow drifts to make an appearance in the final release...
Three cars were raced through the mean streets, surely just an excruciatingly small percentage of the final game's vehicle list. From the Mitsubishi 3000 GT to the '69 Mustang Boss (an example of one of the game's muscle cars) and the 2004 Lamborghini Gallardo Roadster, Midnight Club: Los Angeles looks set to include a full spread of street-racing vehicles, though a demonstration of how the bikes will perform was held back. Being several months away from release, some elements continue to be Work in Progress, including damage modelling and a lack of pedestrians. Scratches to the paint work were the extent of the car damage, though hopefully San Diego will deliver something more devastating come the day of release next year.
Whilst a tour of the body shops wasn't on the cards during the GC'07 demo, Rockstar did at least show how players will be able to rapidly repair their vehicles without having to return to the garages that dot the city (though driving to the Midnight Club version of Paint 'n' Spray is still an option). Choosing a quick repair may solve one problem, but it'll also mean that replacement parts won't get fitted with various decals and paint jobs instantly - they'll be primed however, making the vehicles look like the sort of rude boy cars that drive around urban areas in the real world.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PAX 2007 Preview
Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the next entry in the long-running street racing series. Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the first entry in the series to come out for next-gen hardware, and showcases some truly fantastic graphics and intensely fast racing. The game presents the open-world arcade-style racing system that the series has been known for and adds some new elements to make it an experience worth jumping back in to.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles was on display at Rockstar’s booth at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo, and some of the game’s developers were on hand to talk about the game, scheduled to release in the first half of 2008 on Xbox 360 and PS3. The game will take place in the city of LA (obviously), which will be three times the size of any previous city featured in a Midnight Club title. While it won’t be a 100 percent accurate representation of the city, astute gamers will be able to find their way around by using authentic landmarks like the Hollywood Hills and Rodeo Drive.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Xbox 360 screenshots
The environment will also work dynamically, with elements like changing time of day and weather conditions. These conditions will change naturally as you play the game (the night will last a little bit longer than the day, since that’s when the developers feel that the game works best), or should you want certain conditions for a race, you can go through the menu and change them yourself.
However, aside from the next-gen presentation, the basic fundamentals are still very much in play here. The game is about the same things that it was before, meaning presenting an all-out approach to illegal street racing. You’ll fly through the city, flashing your brights at other street racers to take them on, avoiding cops, and basically living the street racing life. The checkpoints are now fewer and far between, making it so the player should be able to craft their own shortcuts to get from one section of the race to another
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Xbox 360 screenshots
The default camera is the cinematic view, which is not unwieldy like they are in other games, but actually quite functional. It’s actually pretty cool to hit the NoS and have the camera pan down to the side of your car, watching the pavement scream by. For the first time, the team has implemented a cockpit view with a full PoV system that lets you look all around the interior. This is a nice touch, considering that the devs have also implemented an upgrade system where you can not only customize the exterior of your car, but the interior as well. The team also stated that sport bikes would indeed be back for Midnight Club: Los Angeles, with an agreement with manufacturers like Kawasaki and Ducati being crafted for the game’s release.
The game will also implement one-touch multiplayer, allowing them to switch from a single-player environment to a multiplayer mode seamlessly.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles Xbox 360 screenshots
Graphically, the game will definitely live up to some next-gen potential, with the aforementioned huge and detailed city. The cars themselves also already look great, boasting 100,000 polygons a piece with great racing effects in place, like motion blur and bloom lighting.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles is shaping up to be a fine addition to the series and a true next-gen street racing game. Fans of the series will definitely want to check it out next year.
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Rockstar big willy Sam Houser has said that for Midnight Club: Los Angeles its San Diego studio is looking to "redefine the idea of a completely immersive racing game experience, both offline and online." Them's some mighty ambitious words, but can they actually translate into something meaningful for avid motor-headed gamers?
After a fast and furious demo of the street-savvy street racer, we'd have to say that things are looking very, very sexy indeed and Rockstar certainly seems to be hurtling the right way along the immersion highway, thanks to gorgeous visuals, some nifty camera techniques and, most important of all, the freedom to cruise and race without stalling the action.
Big Screen, Main Screen
Designed for optimum foot-to-the-floor thrills - as opposed to serving as a pinpoint street map for LA locals - the City of Angels promises to provide an irresistible and absolutely enormous arena for speed freaks. The straight roads, tight corners and skinny alleyways we saw in the demo screamed "Drive me hard and spank me with your burning rubber." Not literally, though. That was just a lady's voice in our head.
Already we can't wait to sample some of LA's other locales - cruising Santa Monica at sunset or racing through the Hollywood Hills at night (did we mention the new dynamic day/night cycle?) should be quite a ride.
And even though we had to take the role of backseat spectator (strictly no hands-on), the ride was a blast. Fast, thrilling and - buzz word alert - cinematic. Yes, if you choose the aptly named 'cinematic' perspective, high-drama moments are given the visual va-va-voom they so absolutely deserve. A bracing acceleration, burst of nitrous, lift of air, drifting round corners, catching slipstream - all prompt Hollywood tricks that look more than trashy gimmicks, seeming to add more weight, more substance, more velocity to the on-screen motor storm.
How those all-important races are instigated will be paramount to the 'completely immersive' experience, of course. Rockstar is looking to make the transition from laidback cruise to drunk-on-adrenaline driving a seamless one. We witnessed the trusty 'flash lights at challenger' technique, followed by a pre-race race to the starting line, the race itself and then straight back to cruising with a bare minimum of bother and certainly no deviation from the game world.
We were told that there would be around eight ways to hook up with other drivers and enter races in this satisfyingly smoothalicious style. For what it's worth, our money's on a device in the same vein as GTA IV's Whiz cell phone making an appearance, allowing the player to make the call - whenever they want - to other racers in the city and hitting them with the challenge of an automobile throw down.
Big Screen, Main Screen
There were some bullet-point features specifically highlighted in the demo that didn't really tent our trousers. The cockpit view looked lovely - a nice option, certainly - but nothing we haven't seen before. The awarding of - yoinks - 'Rep points' after racing sounded cliché and did make us wince ever so slightly. And we also need convincing that vehicle damage isn't merely a superfluous distraction.
It's always difficult to get a feel for a racing game when somebody else is doing the driving. If the handling's all to poop it really doesn't matter how beautiful the bodywork is. After giving Midnight Club: Los Angeles a close showroom eyeballing, though, we can confirm that it looks the absolute business, from the sexy car models through to the LA streets, and has all the makings of a stylish, street racing classic.
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Wow, longer than I remember it being..