Midnight Club: Los Angeles South Central
Midnight Club: Los Angeles (often shortened to Midnight Club: L.A. orMCLA) is the fourth video game in the Midnight Club series of racing video games, not including Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix. It was officially announced for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on May 16, 2008 by Rockstar Games. The game was developed by Rockstar San Diego. The game features 43 cars and 3 motorcycles.The open world map of Los Angeles is confirmed to be the size of all three cities from the previous installment combined. It has also been confirmed by several sources that each car has a polygon count of roughly 100,000. After several delays, Midnight Club: Los Angeles was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 24, 2008 in thePAL region.
Plot
A man from the East Coast moves to Los Angeles. The character, known only as "Player", takes a major role in the game. In the intro of the game, he is on the phone with the, unknown at the time, Los Angeles City Champ, Booke, telling him to meet at a fast-food restaurant named Carney's Express Limited. He hooks the protagonist character up with three cars, one to pick, in the beginning of the game: a 1998 Nissan 240SX, 1983 Volkswagen Golf GTI, or 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco.
Once you have built up enough of a reputation, you gain the ability to become Champ of the City and of each car type. The first one that is offered is becoming City Champ. At a point in the game, Karol calls telling you about Booke being back as City Champ. When you go talk to Booke, he tells you to race regional opponents to see if you can race against him. After you beat them, Booke calls saying he is impressed, and to meet him at the Standard Hotel for a race which ends up being the City Champ race vs. Booke and one of the final races on Career mode. When you win, not only do you become City Champ, but other championship races open. Once you win against the lesser opponents, the Champs of all five vehicle classes in the game challenge you. The characters are Oswaldo, Julian, Lester, Pete, Marcel.
After you become City Champ, Karol calls and has a proposition. He asks you to get $1 million dollars to help co-own his two garages with him for his business. In return, he lets you have anything in the garages for free. This proposition also affects Doc's South Central garage although the game does not mention it.
After the character has completed 100% in LA in the PSP version, an unknown man somehow has reached his cell number, and calls saying that he wants to meet him at the Los Angeles International Airport on "his flight to Tokyo" then the character says "You talking about the Mid Night Club?" After the call, the Tokyo career and map can be accessed in Midnight Club: L.A Remix.
Gameplay
The game is set in the city of Los Angeles, again providing the option to completely free-roam (in an open world environment larger than all the three cities combined from the previous game, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition). New additions are a 24 hour day-to-night cycle, weather effects and traffic with licensed vehicles, adding a realistic aspect to the game. After races, if any damage is inflicted upon the vehicle, the player doesn't necessarily have to drive back to the garage for a full repair, but instead can choose the Quick Fix option through which old, junkyard-esque parts will be added to the car. To get the nice look back, the player must actually drive back to repair their vehicle at a garage or at a gas station, so totaling the car is only possible within a single race or event. With the RAGE system being used for this game, traffic levels fluctuate throughout the day, with heavy traffic in the morning and afternoon, and little traffic at night. Motorcycles are again part of the game, including the Ducati 999R and thehyper sport bike, Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14. Convertible cars, customizable interiors, in-game photo mode, and customizable exotics are all new additions.
The game is said to be the longest of the 4, with more than 10 different types of races including series races, tournaments, pink slip races, and even freeway races, there is always plenty to do. You even have options. For each race you must drive to the start line or racer which adds to why the game takes so long to beat. The races also have different difficulties. Easy, medium, hard, and hardest. The difficulties are color-coded with green being easy, yellow being medium, orange being hard, and red being hardest. Each difficulty race has greater rewards than the latter.
The Special Abilities options have also been brought into the game (a returning feature from the previous installment), which include EMP, when activated will disable the electronics of every vehicle around the player; Agro, when activated will make the player's vehicle indestructible giving him the ability to plow through traffic without slowing the car down; Roar, when activated will send out a sound wave moving traffic out of the player's way for a clear and straight path through the streets; Zone, when activated will slow down time allowing the player to get between that tough gap in the traffic or letting you get around that sharp corner without losing too much speed. The previous installment had limited which type of car could get that special ability, but all cars in this game can now have any one of the special abilities, that the player chooses. The abilities can also be changed at any time the player feels.
Police return but are no longer scripted to a specific race; they will chase the player no matter where the player is and the longer the player runs from them, the higher the fine will be if the character is arrested Developers placed great emphasis on the elimination of load screens, stating that the player can literally jump from career mode to an online race in under ten seconds. The new dynamic weather system has been reported to alter the gameplay experience, making the vehicle more prone to sliding in the rain.
Plot
A man from the East Coast moves to Los Angeles. The character, known only as "Player", takes a major role in the game. In the intro of the game, he is on the phone with the, unknown at the time, Los Angeles City Champ, Booke, telling him to meet at a fast-food restaurant named Carney's Express Limited. He hooks the protagonist character up with three cars, one to pick, in the beginning of the game: a 1998 Nissan 240SX, 1983 Volkswagen Golf GTI, or 1988 Volkswagen Scirocco.
Once you have built up enough of a reputation, you gain the ability to become Champ of the City and of each car type. The first one that is offered is becoming City Champ. At a point in the game, Karol calls telling you about Booke being back as City Champ. When you go talk to Booke, he tells you to race regional opponents to see if you can race against him. After you beat them, Booke calls saying he is impressed, and to meet him at the Standard Hotel for a race which ends up being the City Champ race vs. Booke and one of the final races on Career mode. When you win, not only do you become City Champ, but other championship races open. Once you win against the lesser opponents, the Champs of all five vehicle classes in the game challenge you. The characters are Oswaldo, Julian, Lester, Pete, Marcel.
After you become City Champ, Karol calls and has a proposition. He asks you to get $1 million dollars to help co-own his two garages with him for his business. In return, he lets you have anything in the garages for free. This proposition also affects Doc's South Central garage although the game does not mention it.
After the character has completed 100% in LA in the PSP version, an unknown man somehow has reached his cell number, and calls saying that he wants to meet him at the Los Angeles International Airport on "his flight to Tokyo" then the character says "You talking about the Mid Night Club?" After the call, the Tokyo career and map can be accessed in Midnight Club: L.A Remix.
Gameplay
The game is set in the city of Los Angeles, again providing the option to completely free-roam (in an open world environment larger than all the three cities combined from the previous game, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition). New additions are a 24 hour day-to-night cycle, weather effects and traffic with licensed vehicles, adding a realistic aspect to the game. After races, if any damage is inflicted upon the vehicle, the player doesn't necessarily have to drive back to the garage for a full repair, but instead can choose the Quick Fix option through which old, junkyard-esque parts will be added to the car. To get the nice look back, the player must actually drive back to repair their vehicle at a garage or at a gas station, so totaling the car is only possible within a single race or event. With the RAGE system being used for this game, traffic levels fluctuate throughout the day, with heavy traffic in the morning and afternoon, and little traffic at night. Motorcycles are again part of the game, including the Ducati 999R and thehyper sport bike, Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14. Convertible cars, customizable interiors, in-game photo mode, and customizable exotics are all new additions.
The game is said to be the longest of the 4, with more than 10 different types of races including series races, tournaments, pink slip races, and even freeway races, there is always plenty to do. You even have options. For each race you must drive to the start line or racer which adds to why the game takes so long to beat. The races also have different difficulties. Easy, medium, hard, and hardest. The difficulties are color-coded with green being easy, yellow being medium, orange being hard, and red being hardest. Each difficulty race has greater rewards than the latter.
The Special Abilities options have also been brought into the game (a returning feature from the previous installment), which include EMP, when activated will disable the electronics of every vehicle around the player; Agro, when activated will make the player's vehicle indestructible giving him the ability to plow through traffic without slowing the car down; Roar, when activated will send out a sound wave moving traffic out of the player's way for a clear and straight path through the streets; Zone, when activated will slow down time allowing the player to get between that tough gap in the traffic or letting you get around that sharp corner without losing too much speed. The previous installment had limited which type of car could get that special ability, but all cars in this game can now have any one of the special abilities, that the player chooses. The abilities can also be changed at any time the player feels.
Police return but are no longer scripted to a specific race; they will chase the player no matter where the player is and the longer the player runs from them, the higher the fine will be if the character is arrested Developers placed great emphasis on the elimination of load screens, stating that the player can literally jump from career mode to an online race in under ten seconds. The new dynamic weather system has been reported to alter the gameplay experience, making the vehicle more prone to sliding in the rain.
