OK, I get it. No-one on the internet likes Guitar Hero because why would you play a Guitar Hero game when you could play Rock Band with that horrible, horrible guitar. Fuck Rock Band. And I can say that as someone who was playing with the drums for about 2 hours a few days ago and still has no desire to drop £150 on it. Christ, has Rock Band joined Mass Effect and Puzzle Quest in those games that you're not allowed to criticise for fear of a fanboy raping?
Rant over, lets get down to business and have 5 reasons to be excited about Midnight Club: Los Angeles.
1) No Bullshit
As the latest trailer shows us, this is Midnight Club as its always been. No gimmicks and no bullshit, just foot to the floor street racing the way its meant to be. Midnight Club has always done that well with a good balance of real world cars and cities coupled with handling on the right side of arcade. The basics are solid, so long as they remain in place (knowing Rockstar's habit of not fixing what ain't broke, I'd expect it to stay like that).
2) Open World Done Right
If anything is needed in an open world racer, its a constant sense of where you're going. Midnight Club's checkpoint races show off what Burnout Paradise was killed by and what makes the series so much fun, its not fun to burn down a straight constantly worrying about missing your turning but burning down a straight knowing where the next turn is on the first race while still having the option to forge off and find your own shortcuts is how the open world racer should be done.
3) Bling
I like customising cars in videogames. It gives me the opportunity to make something that I think looks awesome without actually having to take it on the real road and worry about people thinking about what a tosser I am. Midnight Club 3 made me spend so much time in the garage tweaking little details and standardising licence plate and muffler tip colours across my entire fleet and I loved it. I can only dream of the level of customisation in MC4, given that street racing is all about looking better than everyone else (see: Need for Speed Underground) it would be insane to leave that feature out.
4) Being Fucking Awesome
OK, this one was covered by Burnout Paradise but in an open world racer the appeal comes primarily from finding the inevitable high rooftop and plunging whatever car or bike (and I fucking love the bikes in Midnight Club) off the aforementioned high rooftop and end up landing on the twat in first place hopefully sending you in one direction and him in the other making both of you drive flat into walls and look damn awesome in the process. There should be a trophy/achievement for doing that.
5) Cars, Not Drivers
Watch that trailer, notice how good the cars look. All shiny and super HD detailed. Now look at the humans in those cut-scenes. See how they look like shit from the early PS2 era? Yeah, Midnight Club has its priorities in the right place.
So there, 5 reasons why Midnight Club 4 should be on your list of games you're excited for. Also I struggled to find a subject for this week, I was going to do Mirror's Edge but I don't think I really need to convince anyone to be excited for that. I mean Jesus Christ even Yahtzee's admitted to being excited for that. Also I considered Sonic Unleashed, but I can't even come up with 2 reasons for that, and one of them involves Crush 40.
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you just made me want this game.
I've been hyped for this game for a while. I just hope the driving model is greatly improved over Dub's. That's the only thing I didn't like about their previous games. It felt too arcade.
I Fucking loved MC3, and played that game to absolute death,really, the disc broke through way too much usage.
It showed how street racing should be done in games, as soon as this baby is out, I'll get my copy.
@ALex
The driving is pitch perfect in the games, especially MC3, the arcadey feel was an absolute joy to play, especially when cornering, the drifting was EPIC in that game. By the way the game is turning out, it looks like it will retain that arcady feel, to a much better effect.
I like a little difficulty in my games. Drifting is something that shouldn't be as easy as "hit the hand break and slide." I want to use my throttle as well as my steering to keep me in a drift and I want to use other techniques to initiate a drift. No one uses handbrakes much. It's all about powering over and that's hard to do when your car's tires stick like velcro to the road.
Eh, it's just the sim racer fan in me screaming for a good arcade and sim hybridization.