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| I liked Midnight Club: Los Angeles: Complete Edition for Xbox 360. by Jerry Whorebach Today, 1:43am PST | ||||
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| Developed by Rockstar San Diego (nee Angel Studios) and released in 2008, MCLA was the final evolution of the open-world formula they pioneered back in '99 for Microsoft Midtown Madness. Only by this point, the drivable area had gone from a simplified patch of downtown Chicago, to a massive Disney's California Adventure version of Los Angeles, complete with licensed businesses and landmarks. So you'll race through Hollywood with its Hills (Mulholland Drive) and the Valley beyond (somehow more horrifying than a literal Lynchian nightmare); Santa Monica with its pier and studio backlots; downtown with its skyscrapers and gigantic concrete carchase reservoir; and the Complete Edition even adds the historic urban sprawl of South Central. As someone who has seen SEVERAL episodes of The Rockford Files, I can tell you it is 100% more-or-less how I imagine the real thing.
Open-world racers get a bad rap in arcade racing circles because they tend to have atrocious physics (Grand Theft Auto), poorly-designed courses (Burnout Paradise), or are otherwise just boring as shit (Forza Horizon). MCLA manages to avoid all of those pitfalls, and with its massively overinflated budget serves as a fitting capstone to the pretend street racing fad of the 2000s. Licensed cars, great customization, motorbikes if those are your thing, a day/night cycle with weather (well, as much weather as LA gets), a Rockstar-calibre multidisc soundtrack, easy 20+ hours of singleplayer races, it's a real desert island title. Could stand to be a little more challenging, but at least it's never frustrating. How to play it? It's out-of-print, digitally delisted, and never got a PC port - but that's no issue these days. It's backward compatible on Xbox One and Series, so all you need is a used disc (doesn't even have to be in great shape, as long as it authenticates your Xbox will download a fresh copy in the emulation wrapper). It's also playable on Xenia with a typical gaming PC, possibly with minor glitches, so grab a torrent and see how that works out for you. The developers don't care, I heard they all burnt out and left the industry after this didn't sell 10 million copies and they got shoved into the nightmare meatgrinder of the original Red Dead Redemption production (see: Rockstar Spouse incident). We're never getting another game like this so we might as well enjoy it. |
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Hey Jerry, what's the best single player racing game ever made? NT by Yesterday, 10:16am PST  Re: Hey Jerry, what's the best single player racing game ever made? by Yesterday, 6:50pm PST I liked Midnight Club: Los Angeles: Complete Edition for Xbox 360. by Today, 1:43am PST They don't have the '77 in MCLA, but they have the '79, which is pretty close. by Today, 3:29am PST |
