Mini-Review: Midnight Club: Los Angeles

Ahh, Midnight Club, you are one of my favorite arcade racing franchises. Your past was better, but this iteration isn't too bad...for the most part. Here's some points of note:

Pros:

• Pretty visuals and a serene sense of speed
• Awesomely in-depth car customization and a nice variety of vehicles
  
• Plenty to do, you'll always have easy races open if the insanely difficult ones give you a roadblock
• The GPS system - it works well
• Sometimes funny dialog during races

Cons:

• For frak's sake, give us split-screen racing!
• "Story" races are overly difficult
• Traffic borders on obnoxious, even at midnight

I won't go into the fact that, yet again, we have another awesome racer which gets two thumbs down because of no 2-player split-screen play. Let's talk about difficulty, the "story" races are insane, for the most part. One mistake and you're done for. That mistake almost always comes about because of the obscene amount of traffic that fills these streets at all hours of the day and night. Cut the traffic down a tad and it would be fine, allow some room for error and things would be peachy.

Excellent game on most fronts, but I wouldn't pay full price for it without the ability to play in a split-screen mode.