Midnight Club: LA - Multiplayer Preview

Last month we got our first hands on with Rockstar's Midnight Club: Los Angeles and it made us very happy. Over the last year we've seen the release of the first true next-gen street racing games and they've been uninspiring for the most part. Need For Speed: Pro Street and Burnout Paradise were disappointing to say the least, although Codemaster's GRID did show potential. Imagine our relief then, to find that at least one of the established street racing brands had retained the magic of its previous-gen iterations.

During our hands on with MC: LA's single-player a month ago, Rockstar did drop the multiplayer game into conversation, but wouldn't reveal much info on it. All we managed to garner was that players will be able to seamlessly drop into the multiplayer game GTA style from the single-player. Having gone hands on with the multiplayer recently, we can now tell you that Rockstar has been true to its word. At any point during the main game you can drop into a multiplayer Cruise across the streets of LA that's very similar to Burnout Paradise's online Freeburn mode. From here you can join and host Race and Battle events for up to 16 players, or even use the Race Editor to place checkpoints at your discretion across the city before inviting other cruising players to join the race.

Similarly to MC: LA's single-player, the multiplayer options and features are less of a complete re-write of Midnight Club 3's offerings and more of a sizeable expansion on what was there before. Generally speaking, the different events can still be grouped as either races or variants of capture the flag, but the amount of variations and the range of power-ups have grown considerably in the console generation jump and upped the gameplay ante in the process.

On The War Path

The Battle events will see the most marked expansion, with six separate modes now to choose from. This is slightly deceptive though, as they are all essentially capture the flag variants. Our hands on was with Free For All Capture The Flag, and Keep Away. While the former is self explanatory, the aim of the latter is to hold on to the flag for as long as possible rather than deliver it to a specific point. There will also be team based capture the flag modes and variations that throw flag clusters into the mix rather than spawning one at a time.

These Battle modes suit Midnight Club's gameplay like the red paint on a Ferrari. There are fine touches such as the flag lowering the top speed of whoever has it, which makes knowledge of the city essential so that you can take advantage of all the shortcuts and wrong foot cars in pursuit. The power-ups are also better than ever, with a wide assortment that ranges from the comical to the downright cool.

The comical include Disrupter (which turns opponents' screens white) and a power-up called Reverse Steering that inverts the controls of another driver if you nail them with it. The downright cool ones we picked up included Agro, which turns your car into a material that resembles Wolverine's Adamantium and another cool (literally) power-up that freezes opponents in an ice cube. Predator-esque invisibility cloaks will also join the fun as well as Pulse, which propels opponents into the air.

As far as the multiplayer Race events are concerned, it's very much the same setup as Midnight Club 3. The checkpoint based races include the standard issue single route; circuit races where you can opt for the last car to be eliminated on each lap; unordered checkpoint races, and also a Landmark Race from one side of LA to the other with a single checkpoint to aim for. The interesting new feature will be the Race Editor and although we haven't gone hands on with it, we're certainly eager to find out how creative you can get with it in the final build.

More hands on play with MC: LA also gave us the opportunity to get a better look at the City of Angels. As we'd first suspected, Rockstar has certainly made the right decision by opting for one vast city instead of three smaller ones (as was the case in the previous games). This has allowed the developers to focus on one immersive game world with more variation and intricacy than they could ever have achieved with three separate locations. There are certainly direct parallels to Burnout's Paradise City, with seamless transitions in everything from the single-player events at each intersection to the almost unnoticeable glide into multiplayer action.

It's a game world that you can believe in, made even more prominent by LA landmarks that you'll notice dotted around the place. We came off a bike in Hollywood at one point and as our rider rag-dolled across the pavement, we suddenly noticed the Walk of Fame stars below his contorted body. Other races took us deep into the Hollywood Hills with drawn-out bends that were perfect for drifting, complete with the famous road sign and palatial homes of Mulholland Drive. It was closer to the real world than GTA's Los Santos (but not so close that it became sprawling and repetitive) and the visual presentation was a more glitzy and glamorous LA than San Andreas' dry and dusty City of Saints.

This was particularly the case at night, when the famous LA lights stamp a larger carbon footprint on the globe than the whole of Switzerland, and Rockstar informed us that there will be a day/night cycle in the game with dynamic weather effects. We experienced rain soaked highways in one of the multiplayer races which made controlling the muscle of a Dodge Challenger, err, challenging, although exactly how dynamic this weather is throughout the single and multiplayer game is yet to be seen.

On Yer Bike

Rockstar gave us a chance to get to grips with MC: LA's bikes for the first time and you'll be glad to hear that they're better balanced than ever before. Putting cars and bikes on the same race track has always been a problem for racing games (for example, you may as well not have bothered riding the bikes in Midnight Club 2). However, we rode MC: LA's Kawasaki Ninja ZX14 during the hands on, which is sturdy enough that you're not excessively punished for mistakes, but not so sturdy that it seems unrealistic.

You'll be able to take a fair amount of jostling from cars and being able to distribute your weight through corners with the right analogue stick certainly helps. Additionally, you'll be quicker off the start line and out of corners with faster acceleration, while cars can't slipstream your nimble frame that allows you more opportunities to dart between traffic. However, cornering is still a precarious affair (lampposts and buildings are lethal) and cars can still bully a bike even though they do feel much more stable. Overall, MC: LA's bikes look set to attract quite a few customers who prefer to be the agile gazelle rather than the bounding lioness in pursuit.

As far as cars are concerned, Rockstar took us out for test drives with a Dodge Challenger, Audi RS4, and what's probably the most excessive car in the game, the Lamborghini Gallardo. The Dodge Challenger will face-off with another iconic muscle car in MC: LA, the Ford Mustang (which we drove in our last hands on). We had to be a little more heavy handed with the Challenger than its Ford counterpart, although it was well balanced enough for graceful drifts around the Hollywood Hills' long and winding roads.

While the Audi was certainly a decent runabout saloon, it was the Gallardo that really got our adrenaline pumping. With blistering speed and pinpoint handling it was a joy to drive, but it'll rip your head off given half a chance. A heavy foot on the throttle will result in either orbit (over one of the game's many jump opportunities), or what resembles abstract art as you wrap the car around an oncoming tree.