Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition

Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition is an arcade-y, open-world street car racing game developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games. This title is the fourth installment of the series, and it made its debut in October 2008, on PlayStation Portable, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. The game had mostly positive reviews upon release but had its shares of criticism.

Racing Storyline

Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition tells the story of an unknown man that crosses the United States of America from the East Coast to the city of Los Angeles. He meets mysterious characters that offer him vehicles, and teach him the ways of street racing in the city of Los Angeles. Here players are tasked with choosing a vehicle and racing around the city, challenging and defeating rivals building up a reputation so they can become the champion of the city. The story here is not very relevant to be completely fair, and never really makes you feel compelled and engaged in anything except running as fast as you can, and getting new cars.

Everything about this game is an improvement of older versions of the Midnight Club franchise. The game is not groundbreaking and follows Rockstar standards for the driving genre, but this is not a complaint Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition is still an amazing game that offers the widest array of cars the series had seen to date. The title of the game clearly indicates that the game takes place in Los Angeles, and the highly detailed and faithful depiction of the city is a great selling point, and one of the best aspects of the game. Visuals were improved and performance was also steady throughout the game. Finally, multiplayer options such as online game modes, and Rockstar’s Social Club were fine additions to the game.

A More Complete Los Angeles

The standard edition of the game was amazing on its own. The game played well, looked good, was fun, and delivered cars that felt unique and distinct from one another. Events were varied enough to keep players engaged, and more importantly entertained. Midnight Club: Los Angeles like its predecessors is a high-octane, adrenaline-packed, non-stop, fast-paced game. Cruising through the streets of Los Angeles is extremely satisfying. Adding the presence of law enforcement was also a worthy addition to the game.

The game’s success and sales numbers propelled the title to the “PlayStation 3 Greatest Hits/Platinum Range”, and the “Xbox 360 Platinum Hits/Classics”. Rockstar’s title received continuous support and had DLC’s created for it. In this edition every downloadable content ever created was included, new songs, bikes, police cars, SUVs, new characters, races, and even music is available. This is the complete experience for Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Conclusion

Rockstar again delivers an amazingly fun game, with tons of content to enjoy. Everything players loved about the older titles is present, and a great variety of new cars, features, special moves, and race modes are available. The map itself is huge and Los Angeles is roughly three times bigger than the individual cities of older games. However, the difficulty here is maybe too high once again, the learning curve never gets easier, because the AI automatically adjusts to compensate for the performance of the car you are driving.

PROS:

• Huge Map
• Vast Amount of DLC
• Action-Packed Races
• Multiple Car Types
• Soundtrack Is Good

CONS:

• AI Difficulty Unbalanced
• Learning Curve Stays Steep
• Story Is Ordinary
• Characters Are Unoriginal
• Textures Load Slowly at Times

As one of the most beloved racing titles of the mid-2000s, Midnight Club was a series that done a lot for the street racing scene. While it might no longer be a title we see on the market, for many the 2008 release of Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition was the pinnacle of what was a very fun racing video game. Developed by Rockstar San Diego, this fun racing game added arcade fun and competitive enjoyment to what was already a pretty crowded scene.

Given it is getting on in age now, though, how does Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition live up to the nostalgia? Let’s investigate.

The largest Midnight Club experience out there

First things first, Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition managed to bring together a map of LA that you could free roam. It was massive for the time, providing a map that was as large as all three of the cities from Midnight Club 3. Compared to other big driving games of the time like Need for Speed and Burnout, Midnight Club: Los Angeles Complete Edition managed to hold its own.

The open world was hugely impressive, and the actual racing itself was plenty of fun. The cars handled well, the gameplay felt quite tight, and there was enough to do to keep you coming back for more down the line. Other inclusions like the 24-hour day and night cycle were impressive, too, as well as a dynamic weather system that could make racing easier or harder depending on the conditions.

Motorbikes were brought back, too, which were a much-desired option to return. The sheer volume of cars to choose from, too, helped to keep Midnight Club competing with the likes of the early Forza Motorsport titles.

The game also came with a plot, though to be fair it was pretty surface level in terms of depth and detail. Overall, though, the storyline was fun enough to keep you playing through – the actual racing itself was exceptionally fun for the time.

Still holds up well today (7.5/10)

The Complete Edition of Midnight Club: Los Angeles introduced even more content. This included all of the maps, vehicles, and music from the original game as well as all of the released expansion content. This was a positive release at the time, and it was easy to see why – the racing still feels smooth, the city still feels alive, and the visuals still hold up pretty well today.

Pros

• Fun and exciting range of vehicles to choose from, including motorbikes
• Excellent-sized map with incredible detail for a title released in 2008
• Great variety of things to do that can keep you coming back for more

Cons

• Story mode isn’t going to pull any trees in terms of the actual storyline