Midnight Club: Los Angeles

[SchizoidFreud]

Published by: Rockstar

Developed by: Rockstar San Diego

Genre: Racing

Release date: 2008

Also available on: PlayStation 3

 

Rockstar has revealed it's set to bring the fourth game in its Midnight Club series, titled Midnight Club: Los Angeles, to PS3 and Xbox 360 in early 2008.

 

Developed by Midnight Club stalwarts Rockstar San Diego, the new title promises to deliver an "addictive blend of freedom, style and sheer sense of speed sets it apart from its competition", according to Rockstar's founder and executive producer Sam Houser.

 

What's more, Rockstar hopes to evolve its street racing franchise "on all possible levels and stay true to the hardcore gaming experience the series is known for, while making it accessible to casual gamers and car enthusiasts". So says Jay Panek, producer of the Midnight Club series, at least.

 

"With Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Rockstar San Diego looks to once again push the boundaries and expectations of what a racing game can be," noted Houser. "Rockstar San Diego has always been the technology leader in delivering the ultimate racing experience and with this game they are looking to re-define the idea of a completely immersive racing game experience, both offline and online."

[MarketTantrik]

Video: Midnight Club: LA debut trailer

 

From Xbox360 Fanboy

 

http://www.xbox360fanboy.com/2007/08/23/vi...-debut-trailer/

 

__________________________________________

 

Rockstar just released the debut trailer for Midnight Club: Los Angeles this morning offering up a first look at what the game will visually offer. Embedded above is said trailer in all its glory featuring purdy cars, nifty effects, fast racing and is chalk full of attitude. It's full of the kind of stuff Midnight Club fans drool over, so give it a watch and hope it satisfies some of your appetite until its projected 2008 release date. Race on!

__________________________________________

 

Visit the link above to watch the video. But if ask me the environment graphics are a letdown, but the cars are TEH SWEETNEZZ.

 

(Aaaahhh sweet musclecars)

[nash]

Definitely looking forward to this one since I loved DUB Edition to death

[Anmolsc]

gnna get this one

[Achieved_Nirvana]

Rockstar Games Announces Midnight Club Release Dates for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PSP

 

Rockstar Games is proud to announce the fourth installment of its critically-acclaimed and genre-defining Midnight Club franchise, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, is set for release on September 9th in North America and September 12th in Europe. Developed by series creator Rockstar San Diego, Midnight Club: Los Angeles will give gamers the unprecedented freedom to race through a hyper-realistic LA.

 

"From the beginning, Midnight Club has been about street racing in a open-world," said Sam Houser, Founder of Rockstar Games. "With our team at Rockstar San Diego we have developed a game that we feel once again pushes the boundaries and expectations of what a racing game can be."

 

Screenshot (Courtesy IGN):

 

 

Courtesy IGN

 

------------

 

Check out the Nissan GTR!

[D33P@K]

oh no Sep 9th is too fr away...

 

what about the indian release...that is what matters the most

[HundredProofSam]

Game has been pushed back

 

New release dates:

N America: October 7

Europe: October 10

 

 

 

peace

[Anmolsc]

will get this one..enjoed it on ps2 and psp loads.360 version hopefull be equally fun or even better

[Donz21]

Lookz good but i dont think it will be better then Nfs Undercover { i guess }

[nash]

Lookz good but i dont think it will be better then Nfs Undercover { i guess }

 

HahahahaHahahahaHahahahaHahahahaHahahahaHahahahaHahahahaHahahahaHahahahaHahahaha

ahahahaHahahahaHahahahaHahahaha

[Anmolsc]

nice one donz

[Somebody]

Midnight Club: Los Angeles Hands-On

Rockstar San Diego returns with its long-awaited open-world racer, and we were invited to have a first play of the game.

By Guy Cocker, GameSpot UK

 

 

It's a summer afternoon, and as we arrive at Rockstar's London offices, we can sense the post-GTAIV relief in the air. Having already released what is likely to be 2008's biggest selling game, Rockstar is in understandably high spirits. But video gaming doesn't stand still, and all eyes are now on the publisher's next game. Midnight Club is the company's second most successful franchise, and the development team in San Diego is currently putting on the final touches to the series' Los Angeles debut. With the game set for release later in the year, Rockstar invited us down to sample the City of Angels for an extensive two-hour hands-on session.

 

Welcome to sunny Southern California.

 

Like Burnout Paradise and Test Drive Unlimited before it, Midnight Club: Los Angeles is an open-world racing game. You can drive around the city as much as you want, and when you feel like racing, all you have to do is flash your lights at passing racers. LA itself has been re-created with some artistic license by the game's designers because the real-life grid structure of the city would have been detrimental to the actual racing. This means that some of your favourite landmarks might be missing, but we thankfully saw the 20th Century Fox building, which Die Hard fans will recognise as the Nakatomi plaza and was the scene of the denouement in Fight Club.

 

Running on Rockstar San Diego's own RAGE engine--the same one that powered GTAIV--Midnight Club looks superb. The environments are immaculately detailed, even down to the obnoxious level of advertising in the city. Such brands as American Apparel and Rustlers have made it onto billboards, while all the car parts are from real-world manufacturers. Product placement aside though, the game itself moves at a blistering pace. While Rockstar says the game is more likely to run at 30 rather than 60 frames per second, we encountered absolutely no slowdown as we cruised through the city. In fact, the game is looking very polished at this stage, and it looks like most of the major features are already in place.

 

When you get behind the wheel, you'll soon see that the new Midnight Club is very true to previous games in the series. Although handling changes subtly between vehicles, the cars feel light and responsive, meaning you can twitch your way through competitors, traffic, or roadside obstacles. We got to drive the Mercedes S600, as well as 1967 Mustang Boss cars, and we even got to take the latter to a garage for a series of upgrades. To say Midnight Club's customisation options are extensive is a massive understatement--we were able to customise every conceivable part of the vehicle, as well as design its appearance with paint jobs, logos, and lighting. You could conceivably spend hours in this mode alone, changing everything from the engine components to the stitching on the interiors.

 

We got to see three different racing styles during our time with the game. The most prominent was the standard race, where you compete against four other racers through a series of checkpoints. We also played through a couple of red light races--one-on-one point-to-point races where the idea is to find the quickest route to the finish line. The final racing style we saw was the dynamic freeway race, where you compete against one other racer at speed on the motorways surrounding LA. The traffic on the freeway means that you have to weave much more than in the city centre, but some stretches do allow you to open up the throttle and get up a decent amount of speed.

 

For the first time in the series, Rockstar is set to incorporate a storyline Midnight Club: Los Angeles. We didn't get to see any of it during our play, but short cutscenes will show you as a young driver who gets involved with street racing in order to win money and respect. The reward system is based on these two features, so you'll earn more money and respect for coming in first in races and driving better vehicles. There are also races where you can lay wagers, play missions to deliver packages, and take part in pink slip races where you can bet your car against someone else's car. Finally, tying in with the story are revenge missions, which will trigger cutscenes before and after each race as you take on special characters from around the city.

 

Freeways get pretty clogged during rush hour.

 

There are two other features to the Midnight Club package--the online mode and the bikes. We unfortunately didn't get to play either of them during our play time, but Rockstar did divulge some more information about how they'll work. There will of course be a multiplayer element to the game, and it's clear that you'll be able to go into an online version of the city to challenge other people to races, much as you can with Burnout Paradise. There's no word on player numbers or race types as of yet, but Rockstar has promised to fill us in with the details closer to the release of the game. Motorbikes will also be making a return, and while we didn't get to try them out ourselves, we did get to race against a couple of them for our final race in the city.

 

There's no doubt that this Midnight Club is going to be compared to Burnout Paradise--the open-world setting and racing structure are incredibly reminiscent of what you can find in Paradise City. But while Criterion's arcade racer had little time for realism, car lovers will certainly have more to sink their teeth into with Rockstar's effort. We're sure to see more of Midnight Club: Los Angeles in the run up to release, and we can't wait to see how the two games stack up once October arrives.

[Keyofx]

No cops??

 

boo!

[HundredProofSam]

good too see the customisation options are still ginormous.....i spent countless hours modifying my cars in MC3

 

i hope they still have the car variety that they did earlier.....i want an el camino....and i want it pimped out just like in MC3

 

LA freeways *drool*

 

once again, great find pra2veen

 

 

 

peace

[HundredProofSam]

IGN Hands-on

 

It's been a while since our first good look at Midnight Club: Los Angeles - nearly a full year, in fact. Since then, Rockstar San Diego has been set up in the garage and busy putting new finishes on nearly every piece of its latest entry in the highly successful franchise, and our recent hands-on time with the title has proven that the studio's efforts look to have paid off greatly.

 

Much of what I saw in my latest hands-on time had been revealed to us at our demo last August, but this was my first time getting my hands on the wheel, and as of now, the game drives quite well. When you punch the gas from a standstill, your car will kick and fight to get up to speed, its rear end lurching from side to side as the tires struggle to hug the road. Rockstar San Diego has done a great job in this regard in transferring the feeling of these extremely powerful engines to a plastic controller, perhaps even instilling a bit of fear and respect for the rides as you work to maintain control of the multi-hundred horsepower vehicles.

 

Motorcycles will play a big part of your domination of Los Angeles.

 

Once you're up to speed, the controls become both utterly responsive and realistically touchy. If you're in a high-powered exotic ride, like an Aston-Martin Vantage, for example, the car responds immediately to your inputs, but you need to be careful as it's so fast and agile that you can easily push things too far and wind up taking yourself out of the race. It's a great mix of control and chaos.

 

Seeing the Action Cam in, err, action, is one thing, but it's something else to drive with it. Rather than being stuck directly to your car, with your ride essentially remaining static in the middle of the screen, the Action Cam follows your car on a loose line, bobbing and weaving around the action. It looks like it's taken straight out of a Michael Bay film, minus the terrible dialog and forgettable characters. I prefer to race via the dashboard view, however. Each dashboard in the game is uniquely modeled after the car's real-life counterparts, with working gauges and so forth. The attention to detail here is great and helps give each car that extra bit of something unique to help it stand out from the crowd.

 

We'd gotten a look at the game's GPS system beforehand, which takes you zooming from an overhead, realtime look at the city straight down into your car, but I saw another sweet use of it this go 'round. After a race is set up, you can head to the GPS and scope out the checkpoints for the race to figure out which route you're going to take. That's cool, but even better is the fact that since the system is running in realtime and in 3D, you can zoom in and around the map, and even change the angle, and look for shortcuts to take in the race. This'll help you learn the ins and outs of the city faster than mulling about on your own and immediately helps level the computer's advantage of having built-in knowledge of LA, which is awesome.

 

Tight, chaotic racing is the name of the game.

 

The GPS will also allow you to track down any racer that you've identified in the city. Once you find another racer and flash your lights to begin a one-on-one race, said driver will be added to your GPS and you'll be able to track their whereabouts anywhere in the city. No more having to drive around the city to hunt down opponents - they're all trackable at any time.

 

A number of elements from previous Midnight Club titles are making their return in Los Angeles, but with cool tweaks. For example, you'll once again have access to special moves, but rather than being pre-assigned on a per-class basis, you'll be able to assign a custom special move to any car you want, including the new EMP move which disables all vehicles in a nearby radius.

 

The police have also seen a change in their ways. They'll now target anyone caught speeding and generally driving recklessly, including your opponents, which can be to your advantage. They're also dynamic this time around, patrolling the streets and looking for "bad" drivers. Speeding will catch their attention, as will taking a shortcut through private property. Once you're being chased, you can opt to pull over and pay a small fine, or attempt to get away at the risk of a bigger fine, but with a handful of Reputation Points as a reward if you can escape. A cool twist is that even if you pull over, the game is still "live", allowing you to wait until the cop approaches your window before peeling out and giving yourself a head start as he races back to his car.

 

The DUB folks are helping out once again.

 

A number of different race types will be available in the game. Circuit Races will have you hit checkpoints one by one in order, Unordered Races will you have you clear checkpoints in any order you wish, while Freeway Races will pit you against one other car on the current freeway. The cool thing about these races is that it allows you to focus on dodging traffic and beating the other car without having to navigate the city all too much since they're mostly straightaway races. Red Light Racer has you start at a streetlight and race to another spot in the city any way you wish, while Wager Races and Pinkslip Races will have you gambling your cash and car stash away. The list of race types goes on and on - if you can think of an option, it's probably here.

 

The last bit of the game that I got a look at is Midnight Club: Los Angeles's customization options. Like the previous games in the series, you'll have a ton of parts to tweak and choose from to outfit your car in almost any way you see fit. Performance upgrades allow you to tweak your car's internal bits and improve its handling, speed and whatnot. There's also an interior/exterior bit to the garage that'll allow you to swap out for new hoods, bumpers, spoilers, seats and much, much more. The two upgrades are separate, so you don't have to settle for a specific hood just to edge out a few more horses from your ride. There's a full vinyl and sticker editor as well, with multiple layers to work with, as well as tons of options for the type of paint (and color, obviously). In other words, there will be tons of options at your disposal for making your car unique.

 

You're no longer a faceless driver this time out.

 

Midnight Club: Los Angeles is currently slated to ship on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 7th in the US, and October 9th in Europe and the UK. A PSP version entitled Midnight Club: Los Angeles Remix will also hit shelves the same day.

[Anmolsc]

SwEEEEEeeeeet

[Keyofx]

And the LAPD are present and on patrol!

 

The Remix(ed) re-release of MC3 was even better. It had Tokyo from MCII as a bonus city along with the standard extra cars, parts and soundtrack additions. All they need to do now is not make this as soul crushingly hard as MCII :/

[MarketTantrik]

The visuals look stunning....

 

at least in the screens.

[MadridistaLove]

ya!

 

btw,which all car companies hav given da licenses??

 

any clue?

[Somebody]

Midnight Club: Los Angeles' Second Trailer

 

[gt]37679[/gt]