Midnight Club: Los Angeles - Update 1

Never mind if you just weren’t impressed by the beautiful and vivid graphics of Grand Theft Auto IV. Midnight Club: Los Angeles, an upcoming Street Racing video game title also by Rockstar Games, will blow your mind away when it hits video game stores in October this year.

Combining Rockstar Games’ signature open-world style, feature-packed racing, true next-generation graphics quality and a fully-detailed city, Midnight Club: Los Angeles is the racing game you won’t want to miss, especially when Need for Speed: ProStreet disappointed us!

Although Midnight Club: Los Angeles is utilizing the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) — the same one used in Grand Theft Auto IV, Midnight Club: Los Angeles will look much better, as the space on the game’s DVD or Blu-Ray disc will be utilized more on graphics than on Music or Cut-scenes.

If Rockstar Games have left you disappointed with Grand Theft Auto IV (which you should not be, it’s a really great video game title), don’t worry, as Midnight Club: Los Angeles will definitely deliver! From the several screenshots released, it does seem quite impressive.

So, to the main point of the article — Kotaku has just recently gotten themselves a hands-on, with a couple of new screenshots of Midnight Club: Los Angeles. Many new pieces of information was released, so do check it out! For the lazy gamers, we have also written a summary of all the information below.

• Deep car customization system - you can spend your hard-earned dollars on new performance enhancements for your ride, which use real world name brand aftermarket parts.
• Stuff like acceleration, handling and speed can be upgraded via the purchase of new electronics, air intakes, nitrous tanks and more.
• Also, new paintjobs, new headlights, new doors and new interior components can be purchased.
• There is a cockpit camera view option in the game.
• A “vinyl editor” is oe of the new features that let’s players create a unique look that comes with default stickers and all of them customizable.
• New “special moves” introduced.
  • Zone allows you to slow down time in order to take sharp turns or weave in-and-out of traffic.
  • Agro will give your car added strength and the ability to damage opponents faster, or sometimes knock them completely out of the race.
  • Roar sends a shockwave that clears your path by pushing cars off to the side of the road.
  • EMP is an electromagnetic pulse that shuts down the engines of the cars around you, bringing them to a complete stop.
• Midnight Club: Los Angeles’ city is mostly accurate, with recognizable landmarks such as the Sunset Strip, Beverly Hills and the Santa Monica Pier.
• The city is very detailed, as there are billboards of licensed products like iPods and T-Mobile Sidekicks, as well as landmarks like The Comedy Store.
• The city is realistic and accurate, but is slightly altered to fit into the video game.
• Midnight Club: Los Angeles uses REP points that are used to gain access to higher level races, but that is optional.
• There is an optional sprint to the starting line in every race that can be skipped, which earns you REP points.
• There is a dynamic camera, which switches to an over-the-shoulder style view when hopped up on nitrous or coming off a slipstream drafting high. The cars also feel fast when racing.
• The motorcycles or the LAPD wasn’t test-drived.

Also, don’t forget that the game will be released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on October 7th 2008 in North America and October 10th 2008 in Europe. As the date of the game’s release approaches, we will also continously update this site, so be stay tuned for more news!

Click Back to the Home Page for more News!