We spend some time playing with Rockstar's other big DLC pack on the way soon.
By Thierry Nguyen, 03/03/2009
I used to hate gigantic SUVs like the Escalade. They look ungainly, seem horribly gas-inefficient, and just seem extraordinarily excessive. Every time I play a racing game, I always opt for some sporty Italian, German, or Japanese car. Some racing titles try to incorporate SUVs, but I usually don't even bother looking at them.
SUVs were present in Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition, but absent in Midnight Club: Los Angeles. Again, I didn't really even notice or care. But recently checking out the new stuff in the upcoming Midnight Club: Los Angeles South Central Premium Pack has softened my anti-SUV stance a bit; SUVs are seriously the most fun new feature for me in South Central.
To rewind a bit, the South Central DLC comes in two flavors for: free and Premium. For free, you get the South Central area added to your map. It's a good chunk of real estate (about a third of the whole map, per Rockstar personnel), and, similar to the original parts of MC: LA, you can expect accurate renditions of landmarks, such as Watts Towers, USC, and even the random airplane parked in front of the California Science Center. Every MC: LA owner can snag this and just cruise around South Central (mostly cruise, as the existing races in the game won't utilize the new geography). Though, one nice feature is that even if your friend snags the Premium Pack, but you don't, you can still participate in races (even new ones that course through South Central) with him. Think of it as a quick and free test drive of the Premium stuff.
If you do opt to pay the ten bucks on PSN (or however many Microsoft points on Xbox Live Marketplace), you get a decent chunk of new game added to your copy of MC: LA. In addition to the region, you also get a whole bunch of new single-player characters to race against, and a garage full of new vinyl packs and custom parts. On the numbers front, you get something like 26 new races, 10 new delivery missions, 12 battle maps, 100+ red-light races, and nine new cars spread among both existing car classes. And there are even two new ones: Lowrider and SUV.
Midnight Club: Los Angeles South Central 'Debut' trailer HD
Trying out the new content, I started in a 1964 Chevy Impala (one of the new lowriders), and similar to other muscle cars, it felt way too slidey for my tastes. I'm pretty terrible at racing games, and I overshot a lot of corners because I just didn't have a handle for how the car moved. I fared a bit better in the new luxury car, the Mercedes-Benz CLK 63 AMG. That was damn responsive, and damn fast (when not performing an actual race, I would just cruise along the freeway, and glance down to see I was doing 154). Threading the CLK through the various arches of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum was pretty satisfying.
Yet, as much fun as the CLK was, it didn't quite match up to the fun of the Range Rover Sport. The SUV's obnoxious size helps contribute to what makes it so damn enjoyable in Midnight Club: It does not yield to anyone. Except for extreme cases, if I managed to get the Range Rover into top speed, it barreled straight through everything it hit. Traffic was hardly a problem, as it just plowed through whatever car attempted to stop it. A few times, I smashed through my opponents to gain the lead; one particularly awesome moment was when I smashed through so much traffic, that my rivals got stuck in the resulting traffic collisions, and were snagged by the cops-in-pursuit -- leaving me to easily finish the race.
Rockstar is trying to extend the general philosophy of GTA4's The Lost and Damned, "to give players value for their money", into Midnight Club. Sure, you can get the South Central real estate for free, but the new cars, races, parts, music, Achievements/Trophies, etc. is something you'll need to spring cash for. Even though I only raced around a bit, and not enough to formally judge the pack at all, I can at least say it's changed my perspective on SUVs in driving games. Midnight Club: South Central goes live on both Xbox Live Marketplace and PlayStation Network on March 12.
From 1UP.com
