Midnight Club II

New in Midnight Club II are the presence of the police and the ability to drive a motorcycle. Much of the game consists of cruising around three large and well rendered cities: Paris, Tokyo, and Los Angeles, following a red dot on a map. The dot is a rival racer; once you track and chase them down, you flash your high beams and then you can race them. It's a clever way of giving you a warm up, keeping you immersed in the game, and best of all, teaching you the layout of each city.

Racing is fun, fast, and furious. This isn't a simulation, it's an arcade-style racer--but the physics system is internally consistent so it feels more realistic than it actually is. Rockstar has put a premium on keeping you in control, keeping the thrill-factor high, and giving you a heart-stopping sense of speed. The graphics are fantastic and the cities are incredibly detailed. As a counter-point, the voice acting is just plain awful.

Midnight Club II offers a wide range of game modes, ensuring it will be playable for a long time to come: career, mission, and a mode that lets you just jump into a race. Multiplayer is possible in hot seat mode. All of this makes Midnight Club II a great addition to any video game racing fan's library. --Bob Andrews

Good points about this game are that the graphics are simply stunning and the cities actually look like the actual real life cities, the cars look like the actual real cars but their names are actually fake for example the TORQUE in real life is the NISSAN SKYLINE. Some of the cars on the game are like the one's you see in the film FAST AND THE FURIOUS like the 1971 BESTIA in the final race and the JERSEY XS.

Also the gameplay is absolutely superb and using the left analog stick to control the car is much easier than using the arrow buttons. The features such as BURNOUT,NITROUS and WEIGHT TRANSFER are extremely essential in this game. The only feature that i find difficult to master is TWO WHEEL TRANSFER. It is quite difficult to use sometimes however once you are confident with using it then it is extremely essential.

The storyline is good although people argue that it may get very repetitive at times. The storyline is spanned across three cities in which you have to find racers to compete against in order to become the city champ. Career mode is quite long and pretty hard which is why i like it because i think most racing games aren't much of a challenge. It can become very frustarting when you keep losing to the same racer and you are stuck on that race and it takes you about 20 times to complete it.

Overall a superb game that portrays street racing very well and personally i think it is better than NEED FOR SPEED:UNDERGROUND. If you could re-render your car and add accessories to it then i think it would be the Ultimate Street Racing game. I recommend it to anybody who is a huge racing game fan and who owns a PS2.

OVERALL-10/10


the great game world   February 19, 2004
3 out of 6 found this review helpful

Its great the graphics for the buildings could be a lot better but it is challenging and it takes ages to complete. All action lovers will love it but it aint for the faint hearted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


All you can ask for in a street racing game!   January 15, 2004
1 out of 3 found this review helpful

Midnight clubII is probablly the best racing game I've ever tried. Although it might not be the best driving game I've ever tried, (that's grand theft autoIII), it's still the best racing game. Better than Grand Turismo A-Spec. This game actually captures the aspect of illegal street racing. I love the way you race for cars and race to be the city street king.
Another thing I love about this game is the cars. All street racing carsand even some muscle cars, all-american muscle.
To rap up this review I have to say if you like 2fast 2furious you'll cherrish this game.


Fantastic street racer but frustrating   August 24, 2003
Mr Louie Al-Samaraie (Alicante Spain)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful

This game is a brilliant racer and offers more excietment than GT3 it has 27 cars and 3 motorbikes, three massive citys L.A. Paris and Tokyo. A long career mode, a long arcade mode and battles with the CPU such as capture the flag. And also it has online play which is really addictive if you can get in to a game, which proves to be hard.

The graphics are really good and you can tell what cars they really are in the world, (because the cars have fake names and no car symbols, just the shape gives it away). The sound is really good the cars have got brilliant rev ups and soung good on the roads, also the music/radio has loads to listen to about 15 tracks in each city offering rap, pop, techno.

Now here comes the bad bit, the game is just too frustrating in career mode, i guarantee that 85% of races will give you trouble making you really angry. Some races are so hard they take up to 40-50 times to pass. Its just the little things, like when you miss the turn for that finish line, or when buses pop out of nowhere and make you crash or you keep getting knocked off your bike by the oppenents. But i guess all the difficulty makes the game longer so thats good. Really good street racer, worth a try.

If the fast and the furious is going to be anything like this then i will look out for it.