Midnight Club: Street Racing

Midnight Club: Street Racing Review

Midnight Club: Street Racing Feature

• Race for pride, power and glory in sleek, customized, tricked-out sports cars
• Speed like crazy through crowded streets, running red lights, terrorizing pedestrians, driving on sidewalks and outrunning the cops
• Experience accurate models of New York and London as you race through a living city and win the pink slips of opposing players

The main premise of Midnight Club Street Racing is that you and your pals take to the streets each night to race hot rods around town. Along the way, you'll terrorize those pedestrians who are crazy enough to be outdoors at night, and generally crash into anything that's vertical. It goes without saying that then you'll spend most of your daytime hours pounding out the dents from the previous night's misadventures.

Midnight Club Street Racing plays like a combination of the high-res street shenanigans of the Dreamcast's Tokyo Extreme Racing and the mission-based mayhem of the PS One's Driver. You've got two fantastic urban vistas in which to roam around--New York and London--and a jacked-up little runabout in which to do it. The game isn't just about racing, but about racing from point to point, too, or playing follow the leader.

Graphically appealing (if more than a little flat, but that doesn't detract) and speedy, this game might not tax the PlayStation2 hardware, but it might tax your skills as a gamer if you don't keep up.

Maps to the city are available whenever you need them, and make it rather difficult to get lost. It's advisable to try, however--there are tons of miniroutes to traverse. No route is sacrosanct--you can bash through plate-glass windows, barrel through underground parking structures, meander across parks, and even pogo from roof to roof. In this way, the game has a bit of that good ole Driver feel; although, the further in you play, the night skies and somber tone of the city dispel some of this feel.

Midnight Club Street Racing is a great game, and yet another reason for new PlayStation2 owners to smile. While it's not terribly groundbreaking, it's one game that's loads of fun to play. --Todd Mowatt

Pros:

• Solid and fun race mechanics
• Sprawling cityscapes, with multiple routes
• Two-player games add replayability

Cons:

• City objects lack definition
• Only two cities in which to race

PS2 Midnight Club: Street Racing - Game Only - No Manual or Case