Oh no its the cops,throw the damn donuts

User Rating: 7.7 | Midnight Club: Street Racing (Platinum) PS2
When I first glanced at the early screenshots of Midnight Club, I thought that the car models looked great, but there was just too much chroming on the cars and it downright made them look like car shaped gold coins. Although after playing the game I then noticed why there was so much glare, and that was because of all the lighting effects the game has, from lampposts on freeways, highways and city streets. The chrome look made everything seem that much more realistic and it really brought out the midnight feel of the game. Since one of Midnight Club's stages is the city that never sleeps New York, you can only imagine the kind of great stuff that Angel did for areas like Times Square, the neon lighting of China Town, and office buildings with lights turned on in about a majority of the office windows. Another lighting effect feature is the fore and back lights on cars, I like the illumination that they give off, a really nice touch I must say. Midnight Club has gotten hundreds of different textures scattered throughout New York City and London (Tokyo was cut out so that the game makes launch day), both of the cities are overflown with great looking buildings, none that are very repetitive and best of all to keep the cities true to their real world counterparts, real life monuments/places such as the Big Ben (London), Rockefeller Center, St. Patricks Cathedral and a weird looking Madison Square Garden with just a basketball arena in it.

The game's environments are among some of the largest I've seen in quite awhile, the only game that I think can compete is Driver and Driver 2. Since the areas are so impressively large, a slight draw-in problem is present, it isn't very noticeable, since it only occurs in the far background, and instead of the background popping in, it gently appears in a ghostly like fashion, nothing really serious. As for car models I must admit these are some of the better looking car models I've seen in a videogame, I think that Tokyo Extreme Racing 2 had some awesome looking car design that is definitely worth noting, although these babies show real-time damage to the body of the car, which is an incredibly feature, but it's a fact that both of these games will be run over by Gran Turismo 3, when it roars on shelves January or February. Each vehicle has a great amount of detail, a good percentage (or almost all) of the bodies themselves are based on real cars like Mitsubishi Eclipse's (the 1998 model), or Renault, Lamborghini's, Crown Victoria cop and taxi cars, and a few more, but as long as they look great that's all that matters. The traffic cars are very nice looking and you'll be able to spot cars like Jeep Grand Cherokees, Dodge RAMs, Ford Winstar and a variety of many others. I'll also have you guys know that Midnight is anti-aliased and flicker free, incase you were wondering. The frame rate travels at a rarely dropping 30 frames per second, and to go along with that, the sense of speed is some of the best I've ever felt in a racing game, it is wonderful. The only real complaint I have about the visuals is that the cars out of proportion, for instance a Jeep Grand Cherokee traffic car can be smaller than a 2-door sporty VW Bug-esque car, which we all know that a Grand Cherokee can easily crush a VW Beetle, this is a bit annoying and hopefully gets taken care of in the next sequel. I think that these are some of the best racing visuals to be found on any console.

There is a great deal of cars included in Midnight Club: Street Racing, approximately 42 cars available in total, with the ability to add a few more cars if you have a game save from Smuggler's Run on your memory card. All of the cars are based on real life car models such as Chevy's, Ford's, Mitsubishi's and plenty of others. The car list is so extensive that it even features a taxi cab, a London double decker bus, police cars, meter maid vehicles (mini sized police cars with three wheels), and even more. Although you only have a choice of two stages to choose from (Tokyo had to be dropped, so that the game would make the launch date), they are incredibly huge with an immense amount of exploration. Arcade mode lets you pick from a hefty amount of great modes, such as Joyride, Head to Head, Waypoint and best of all Capture the Flag, all of these modes played in two-player are even a bigger blast. I had the time of my life playing Capture the Flag with a bud of mine, the premise is exactly the same as it is found in first person shooters, you pick up a flag and bring it back to the green point with out getting smashed by another car, this is arguably the best mode in the whole game. Angel Studios did a fantastic job of creating one of the best PS2 games out there, this games only license may be Coca Cola and MTV for New York City, but the killer action is what I desire and crave, two hearty thumbs up from me.

This game great and entertaining, but has some problems.