Midnight Club II
Too. Effing. Hard.
Published: April 21, 2003
I like a challenge now and then. After all, you can't really feel a sense of accomplishment if you aren't pushed from time to time. Midnight Club II, however, takes challenging you to a whole new extreme, and it does it in such a way that the bullshit tactics the AI employs near the end of the game are enough to make some gamers so frustrated that they throw their controllers down in disgust and walk away from the game never to return.
Midnight Club II started out promising enough. It was hard from the get-go, requiring at least a handful of retries as I accomplished the game's main goal of racing from one checkpoint to the next, but it never really gave me a sense of impossibility, just a win that was slightly out of reach until I really learned the course's nuances and shortcuts. But, that was back in Los Angeles, the first of the three cities you're required to race in to unlock faster cars for use in the other modes (more on those in a moment). By the time I was about halfway into the middle of the second city, Paris', races, I began to notice the AI taking pot-shots at me from time to time. By the time I was in Tokyo, the game's AI had been reduced to slamming into my back tires to cause a spinout or shoving me nearly every chance it had – into cars, posts, buildings – you name it.
This is where Midnight Club II's core experience falls apart. It's not that the game isn't challenging enough in course design or traffic; it's that by the end of the game, the bullshit factor of the AI is so high it's off the charts. The AI isn't even swapped out for motorcycle races, so if you happen to be driving a car, you'll get to chuckle as the motorcycle AI tries to run you off the road only to bite it hard because they're trying to ram a car off the road with a MOTORCYCLE. It might be amusing when it's bikes, but cars can and will destroy any chance of making it into the lead when you're racing against other cars. And forget about trying to race a bike against cars; you'll be crashing every two seconds.
So what's the actual motivation for beating the game (or, finishing it at 100%)? Cars. Lots of 'em. There are a handful of bikes too, but the bulk of your automotive rewards come in the form of cars (including a certain caped crusader's vehicle if you finish the game completely). They're important to winning races in the career mode, of course, and arcade mode isn't much different, but they're nigh essential online, which is where Midnight Club II's saving grace could have lied. Unfortunately, with a game that's entirely dependent on speed to win races (you can run circles around faster cars in handling and acceleration, but as soon as they hit the nitrous, they're gone), the online variant plays pretty much like the offline version; those that drive fast and play cheap will win. There are a couple ways to get around this, of course, like making your own course with lots of twists and turns than you can then upload online and race people with, but then it makes it difficult for the speedy bikes to keep up – especially if traffic is high.
Midnight Club II isn't a complete loss, of course. It's an unbelievable blast at first, requiring you to really learn a course before you can beat it (even if you spend hours driving around the city without racing), but the whole grind of trying and retrying a course over and over again until you know it without looking at the map gets stale quickly. There's an attempt to mix things up with a couple variations on the checkpoint nabbing theme, like a straight time trial, or the option to grab the checkpoints in any order (though only a very specific route will get you to the finish in time), but it's all basically variations on the same theme, and still presents the problem of having to learn even the supposedly more open and "choose your own path" courses. This is essentially the same experience online. I personally hated racing on tracks online that I'd never seen before because I simply didn't know them and would usually lose to the person that made them for obvious reasons. Add in the aforementioned cheap AI on the latter races and the expletives that spilled from my lips over and over again as I retried the Tokyo courses 10 times… then 20… then 30… and sometimes more I'm pretty sure have convinced everyone else in our office building that I have Teurettes Syndrome.
Luckily, Midnight Club II isn't hard on the eyes. The first game was a bit of an eyesore, slathering everything in gaudy shades of neon and applying slightly cheesy rain effects to the ground in an attempt to elicit empty oohs and ahhs. MCII, on the other hand can coax those same oohs and ahhs willingly from anyone who sits down and plays long enough. A decent draw distance, lots of effects and a usually solid framerate keep things interesting. Pack too many cars on the screen at once, though, and things get a little choppy. Which is why it's nice to take in all the high res textures and purdy effects when you can (the shower of particles that rooster-tail off of broken streetlamps are a particularly nice effect). Playing the game online seems to have no real discernible effect other than a slightly more frequent drop in framerate from time to time.
Likewise, the audio manages to keep things enjoyable too. Most of the stuff you'll hear leans towards the electronica side (specifically house, trance, or eurodance-ish stuff), though L.A. does offer some more R&B-flavored variety. Most of the music is rather forgettable, existing only to fill that void that you didn't know was there until you tried to turn it off, which you will try to do from time to time because there are tracks that will bore a hole into your skull if you hear them 20 or so times. Then again, there are tracks in the game that I could have listened to on every course. Some of the trance stuff in particular was very, very easy on my ears, mainly because I enjoy some of the better trance out there. It seems the music team nailed it rather well.
The effects are similar to the bulk of the music, coughing up the necessary squeals, crunches and smacks that would be associated with screaming down packed streets with a 300 horsepower machine. The voices for the different drivers you'll take on, while impressively plentiful in number, end up becoming as tired as the races since you'll likely hear them all many, many times over.
Overall, Midnight Club II isn't a bad game. It strays from greatness thanks to completely frustrating AI that ends up cheating so badly, it's not even worth playing. The online mode CAN be quite fun, and there's nothing quite like taking your hard-earned street beast online and blowing the doors off real people, but when you do get on and hop into any given game, you'll notice that everybody pretty much picks the fastest cars. This is fine for those that got all the way through the game, but for someone just trying to take a break from the offline action with a little digital human contact, it makes the game largely unplayable until they can finish everything up. A definite rental with the potential to buy if you're still into it after five days of solid playing, MCII is a solid, if flawed racer.
Midnight Club II started out promising enough. It was hard from the get-go, requiring at least a handful of retries as I accomplished the game's main goal of racing from one checkpoint to the next, but it never really gave me a sense of impossibility, just a win that was slightly out of reach until I really learned the course's nuances and shortcuts. But, that was back in Los Angeles, the first of the three cities you're required to race in to unlock faster cars for use in the other modes (more on those in a moment). By the time I was about halfway into the middle of the second city, Paris', races, I began to notice the AI taking pot-shots at me from time to time. By the time I was in Tokyo, the game's AI had been reduced to slamming into my back tires to cause a spinout or shoving me nearly every chance it had – into cars, posts, buildings – you name it.
This is where Midnight Club II's core experience falls apart. It's not that the game isn't challenging enough in course design or traffic; it's that by the end of the game, the bullshit factor of the AI is so high it's off the charts. The AI isn't even swapped out for motorcycle races, so if you happen to be driving a car, you'll get to chuckle as the motorcycle AI tries to run you off the road only to bite it hard because they're trying to ram a car off the road with a MOTORCYCLE. It might be amusing when it's bikes, but cars can and will destroy any chance of making it into the lead when you're racing against other cars. And forget about trying to race a bike against cars; you'll be crashing every two seconds.
So what's the actual motivation for beating the game (or, finishing it at 100%)? Cars. Lots of 'em. There are a handful of bikes too, but the bulk of your automotive rewards come in the form of cars (including a certain caped crusader's vehicle if you finish the game completely). They're important to winning races in the career mode, of course, and arcade mode isn't much different, but they're nigh essential online, which is where Midnight Club II's saving grace could have lied. Unfortunately, with a game that's entirely dependent on speed to win races (you can run circles around faster cars in handling and acceleration, but as soon as they hit the nitrous, they're gone), the online variant plays pretty much like the offline version; those that drive fast and play cheap will win. There are a couple ways to get around this, of course, like making your own course with lots of twists and turns than you can then upload online and race people with, but then it makes it difficult for the speedy bikes to keep up – especially if traffic is high.
Midnight Club II isn't a complete loss, of course. It's an unbelievable blast at first, requiring you to really learn a course before you can beat it (even if you spend hours driving around the city without racing), but the whole grind of trying and retrying a course over and over again until you know it without looking at the map gets stale quickly. There's an attempt to mix things up with a couple variations on the checkpoint nabbing theme, like a straight time trial, or the option to grab the checkpoints in any order (though only a very specific route will get you to the finish in time), but it's all basically variations on the same theme, and still presents the problem of having to learn even the supposedly more open and "choose your own path" courses. This is essentially the same experience online. I personally hated racing on tracks online that I'd never seen before because I simply didn't know them and would usually lose to the person that made them for obvious reasons. Add in the aforementioned cheap AI on the latter races and the expletives that spilled from my lips over and over again as I retried the Tokyo courses 10 times… then 20… then 30… and sometimes more I'm pretty sure have convinced everyone else in our office building that I have Teurettes Syndrome.
Luckily, Midnight Club II isn't hard on the eyes. The first game was a bit of an eyesore, slathering everything in gaudy shades of neon and applying slightly cheesy rain effects to the ground in an attempt to elicit empty oohs and ahhs. MCII, on the other hand can coax those same oohs and ahhs willingly from anyone who sits down and plays long enough. A decent draw distance, lots of effects and a usually solid framerate keep things interesting. Pack too many cars on the screen at once, though, and things get a little choppy. Which is why it's nice to take in all the high res textures and purdy effects when you can (the shower of particles that rooster-tail off of broken streetlamps are a particularly nice effect). Playing the game online seems to have no real discernible effect other than a slightly more frequent drop in framerate from time to time.
Likewise, the audio manages to keep things enjoyable too. Most of the stuff you'll hear leans towards the electronica side (specifically house, trance, or eurodance-ish stuff), though L.A. does offer some more R&B-flavored variety. Most of the music is rather forgettable, existing only to fill that void that you didn't know was there until you tried to turn it off, which you will try to do from time to time because there are tracks that will bore a hole into your skull if you hear them 20 or so times. Then again, there are tracks in the game that I could have listened to on every course. Some of the trance stuff in particular was very, very easy on my ears, mainly because I enjoy some of the better trance out there. It seems the music team nailed it rather well.
The effects are similar to the bulk of the music, coughing up the necessary squeals, crunches and smacks that would be associated with screaming down packed streets with a 300 horsepower machine. The voices for the different drivers you'll take on, while impressively plentiful in number, end up becoming as tired as the races since you'll likely hear them all many, many times over.
Overall, Midnight Club II isn't a bad game. It strays from greatness thanks to completely frustrating AI that ends up cheating so badly, it's not even worth playing. The online mode CAN be quite fun, and there's nothing quite like taking your hard-earned street beast online and blowing the doors off real people, but when you do get on and hop into any given game, you'll notice that everybody pretty much picks the fastest cars. This is fine for those that got all the way through the game, but for someone just trying to take a break from the offline action with a little digital human contact, it makes the game largely unplayable until they can finish everything up. A definite rental with the potential to buy if you're still into it after five days of solid playing, MCII is a solid, if flawed racer.
