Midnight Club: Street Racing - PlayStation 2

Amazon.com The main premise of Midnight Club Street Racing is that you and your pals take to the streets each night to race hot rods around town. Along the way, you'll terrorize those pedestrians who are crazy enough to be outdoors at night, and generally crash into anything that's vertical. It goes without saying that then you'll spend most of your daytime hours pounding out the dents from the previous night's misadventures. Midnight Club Street Racing plays like a combination of the high-res street shenanigans of the Dreamcast's Tokyo Extreme Racing and the mission-based mayhem of the PS One's Driver. You've got two fantastic urban vistas in which to roam around--New York and London--and a jacked-up little runabout in which to do it. The game isn't just about racing, but about racing from point to point, too, or playing follow the leader. Graphically appealing (if more than a little flat, but that doesn't detract) and speedy, this game might not tax the PlayStation2 hardware, but it might tax your skills as a gamer if you don't keep up. Maps to the city are available whenever you need them, and make it rather difficult to get lost. It's advisable to try, however--there are tons of miniroutes to traverse. No route is sacrosanct--you can bash through plate-glass windows, barrel through underground parking structures, meander across parks, and even pogo from roof to roof. In this way, the game has a bit of that good ole Driver feel; although, the further in you play, the night skies and somber tone of the city dispel some of this feel. Midnight Club Street Racing is a great game, and yet another reason for new PlayStation2 owners to smile. While it's not terribly groundbreaking, it's one game that's loads of fun to play. --Todd Mowatt Pros: Solid and fun race mechanics Sprawling cityscapes, with multiple routes Two-player games add replayability Cons: City objects lack definition Only two cities in which to race Product Description Midnight Club: Street Racing gives you the illicit fun of racing on city streets. In this edgy, fast-paced game, you'll cruise modified vehicles almost anywhere along streets, parks and sidewalks in some of the most famous cities in the world. Rockstar totally lives up to its name with this rocking game cut out of Japan's underground street racing scene. Pegging the accelerator of the PlayStation 2 computer entertainment system, Midnight Club: Street Racing was a speeding shock for gamers caught unaware when it got off the line with the system's launch. Review Back in 1999, a developer called Angel Studios teamed up with Microsoft and released Midtown Madness, a PC racing game that plunked you down in the middle of a realistically modeled city (in this case, Chicago) and let you engage in different types of races amid the city's traffic, pedestrians, and police. Now, Angel Studios has teamed up with Rockstar Games, and the result is Midnight Club: Street Racing, a game that takes the basic concepts and modes that made Midtown Madness so much fun and adds to it more hidden vehicles and a rudimentary plotline. The plotline is as simple as it is unnecessary. You, as a New York City cabdriver, need a little spice in your life. One night, while driving around aimlessly, you happen upon Emilio, a low-rider driving chump with a turtleneck sweater and an accent that bounces between Latino and Italian. After showing that you can keep up with Emilio's ride, he introduces you to Midnight Club, a secret organization of late-night street racers. From there, you cruise the city, looking for trouble in the form of hookmen. These hookmen are visible on your map. Once you get behind them, you'll have to keep up with them until they feel that you're worthy of a race. The hookmen races pit you against that driver's entire posse. But calling up one of the hookmen on your handy cell phone puts you in a one-on-one race. When you win the race, you add the opponent's car to your garage. Most of the races are checkpoi

Race for pride, power and glory in sleek, customized, tricked-out sports cars Speed like crazy through crowded streets, running red lights, terrorizing pedestrians, driving on sidewalks and outrunning the cops Experience accurate models of New York and London as you race through a living city and win the pink slips of opposing players