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Did we mention how great the game looks?
Did we mention how great the game looks?Did we mention how great the game looks?

Things don't get any easier of course, with longer multi-race events often stretching into 30 minute or more territory, making a loss even harder to take. You do earn rep and money even if you don't win, but at times the lack of victories starts to grate. This is a video game after all. It's fine cruising around town, but you also want to be made to feel like a racing god, not a guy who randomly felt like challenging a rude boy at a set of traffic lights, not knowing that your old banger takes six seconds to get out of first gear - let alone reach 60 mph. It's not an insurmountable problem, but it is going to put off gamers who might have expected an easier ride.

Special abilities (ploughing through vehicles, slowed time, repelling traffic and electronics disruption) help you out, and are fun to use, but it's still incredibly hard to build up a lead in a race that can't be wiped out with a bad corner or head-on collision with an on-coming driver. Driving a bike actually makes things a little easier, as they can nip about between vehicles more easily and corner better, but the downside is that they don't handle crashes all that well.

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Cop chases are always good fun in games, so it's great to see them in Midnight Club L.A. If you're seen breaking the speed limit or driving dangerously then you can more or less guarantee that cop cars will be on your case. You can be a good boy and pull over, paying your fine, or you can pull over, wait for the cop to walk over and then speed off (complete with Police Camera Action camera angle). A high speed pursuit ensues, and you'll need to drive exceedingly well to give the fuzz the slip.

Something that Rockstar has managed to do is avoid navigation problems. It's hard to pin down why this is the case, but the city is just easy to get around. Whereas in Criterion's Burnout Paradise you'd frequently miss vital turns, that rarely happens in Midnight Club. As you start to take part in harder races the checkpoints become more spaced out and keeping track of where you're going via the on-screen mini-map becomes trickier, but it's still more than doable.

Online play has been integrated in a similar way to how Rockstar handled it in GTA 4. There's no separate menu for online, with everything accessed while you're in the game. When online the busy streets are stripped of cars, but there's still plenty of fun to be had racing against other petrol heads. The integration with Rockstar's Social Club community site is also rather excellent, if you're into that kind of thing, making this one of the best online racers around.

The day/night cycle is wonderful and shows off the awesome lightingThe day/night cycle is wonderful and shows off the awesome lighting

As fun as Midnight Club L.A. is, it wouldn't be nearly as impressive if it weren't for the incredible visuals on display. Using the same engine that powered GTA 4 it should be no surprise that everything looks rather wonderful, and after playing some other open world games recently it's still hard to understand how Rockstar is so far ahead of the competition. The lighting is spot on, the weather effects are phenomenal and the frame rate rarely misses a beat. Combine this with a typically hip Rockstar soundtrack and you've got one of the slickest games you'll see this year.

The open-city racer has some pretty impressive games competing for your cash at the moment. Burnout Paradise is offering a seemingly endless stream of new content to play around with in its action-packed fictional city, whereas Midnight Club L.A. is slicker, better designed and gives a more real sense of being in a crowded city. We're happy to play both, and we recommend you do the same.

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