Midnight Club: Los Angeles
- August 23, 2007 11:05 AM PST
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Even though it's releasing next year, Midnight Club: L.A. is already impressive.
Vroom! The Rockstar reps blasted through the neon-drenched streets of the Sunset Strip, screaming through hairpin turns at top speed. As the Lamborghini Gallardo Roadster screeched around one particularly tight corner, the camera perspective automatically swung out to a wide cinematic angle, adding to the sensation of speed. Then, when the driver activated his nitrous boost, the camera shifted again to hug the driver's side of the Roadster as it plowed down a narrow street. Again, the effect was highly cinematic, making the game look more like a high-speed chase movie than a video game.
Bikes are back.
Raw speed and cinematic flair-that's pretty much Midnight Club: Los Angeles in a nutshell. Though the game features many improvements to its predecessors, our first glimpse of the game only reinforced the claim that the Midnight Club series is one of the fastest, most adrenaline-soaked racers on the market. And in early 2008, it's coming to both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 with a new-gen sheen.
Speed Thrills
We saw an early version of Midnight Club: L.A. running on an Xbox 360 development kit. There were a few minor rough edges in the presentation, but the in-game graphics already looked remarkably polished. The licensed cars were superbly detailed, with Rockstar reps claiming over 100,000 polygons per car. Cars are painted with highly realistic-looking textures that show off the metallic flakes embedded in the paint job, giving everything a glossy but realistic sheen.
100K polygons per car...
Similarly, the open-world racetracks pop with GTA-like details, such as well-known L.A. landmarks (the Tower Records and Carney's burgers on the Sunset Strip), realistic billboards (we spotted iPod and Dolce & Gabbana ads) and re-imagined road layouts that will accommodate the high-octane races Midnight Club is famous for. It's built on Grand Theft Auto IV's RAGE technology, which is adept at packing tremendous visual detail into huge, open-world environments-a tricky combination for other game engines, but one that RAGE handles easily.
Faster, Pussycat!
Rockstar San Diego is focused on minimizing boring tasks like menus and load screens, thus keeping the player firmly in the race at all times. Even the map screen is handled entirely within the game engine; the camera swoops out dramatically to show an overhead view of the streets of Los Angeles, then zooms back in to focus on your car. Also, you won't have to beat specific races to proceed in the game. Instead, you'll score Reputation points by participating (and placing) in various races throughout L.A., which should lower the entry barrier and reduce frustration.
You won't believe the amount of detail on these cars.
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- Jul 06 2008 at 06:25:12:PM PST
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this game is going to take NFS off the map in my view man looks good just i dont want to past 100 races just to get one fucken thing...lol for those of you who have played DUB edition know want i'm talking about
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