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How Metascores Are Calculated
76
Age of Booty
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed games. |
Whether driving by the beach or beating the competition by cutting through a parking garage at 200 mph, Midnight Club: Los Angeles provides a seamless, breathtaking environment for everyone who loves to compete. With no load times, no tracks, and no rules, the game allows players to race who they want, when they want, and where they want in an unbelievable recreation of Los Angeles. A racing game is nothing without the great cars and Midnight Club: Los Angeles allows extensive customization of vehicles for both performance and appearance. Players can now fully personalize their officially licensed imports, tuners, classic muscle cars and motorcycles both inside and out with a dizzying array of licensed rims, spoilers, interior gauges, tires and more. [Rockstar Games]
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more... 93
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Playstation Official Magazine UK
Hit your stride and the confluence of hard-won experience, favourite ride and the unmistakable kick of nitrous will see you threading through rush-hour traffic at speeds bystanders will scarcely believe possible. [Dec 2008, p.102]
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85
Worth Playing
Midnight Club: Los Angeles is still a great racer and a great game, but unless your luck tends toward winning big lotteries back-to-back or you have supernatural ability at arcade racers, the price of entry into the current-gen Midnight Club title is giving up your meticulous win-every-race attitude, if you have one.
84
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84
Cheat Code Central
Sure, it doesn't have the grandeur and scope of the Gran Turismo series, or the freewheeling mayhem of Burnout, but it does bring a style all it's own to the genre. With plenty of rides, modes, and personality to spare, this title is definitely worthy of having a spot on your automotive mantle, as long as you're up to the challenge!
84
IGN UK
Midnight Club: Los Angeles is unarguably a high quality racer that admirably bridges the gap between a freeform gaming world and a more structured race setup. Yet for all its visual thrills, extensive (if never exhaustive) customisation options and high production values, it feels as though Rockstar San Diego has played it a little too safe here.
81
PSM3 Magazine UK
"Burnout"'s more 'Hollywood', but MC:LA's the purer arcade racer. [Dec 2008, p.76]
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Gameplayer
The game is also a visual feast with striking environments, meticulous vehicle models, and adrenaline enhancing post-production effects. While its true the series hasn’t made a massive evolutionary leap forward in terms of gameplay, it still offers up plenty of unforgettable racing moments where you’ll get P.I.T. maneuvered by an opponent on the last corner but manage to desperately slipstream turbo your way back to win by the span of a diamond encrusted hood ornament. In other words; it’s got fun factor out the chrome-plated wazoo.
80
EuroGamer
From time to time, it will get the better of you, and at that point it's not about difficulty so much as accumulated failure, a burden Midnight Club: Los Angeles forces you to carry, and one that's tough to bear for all the game's other successes. Tolerate the lashing of agony that accompanies every one of these moments, though, and this is fast, brutal, ingenious racing drama, dragging you into the screen every bit as thoroughly as Burnout Paradise, and delivered in a manner that befits the publisher that financed GTA IV.
80
Playstation: The Official Magazine (US)
So long as you have the skills (or beefy enough cars) to avoid crashing constantly, you can find an almost endless supply of fun on the streets of LA. [Dec 2008, p.76]
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Gaming Age
Basically, I really enjoyed Midnight Club LA, but I was hardly amazed by it. It's a really solid arcade style racer with a lot of flashy stuff going for it, but it doesn't really do anything new or exciting, and it's not going to be the game to replace a couple other high profile racing titles on the 360 or PS3.
70
Edge Magazine
The overwhelming impression Los Angeles leaves is very slick, but it’s ultimately quite soulless. [Dec 2008, p.86]
70
67
The Onion (A.V. Club)
In spite of the L.A. verisimilitude and the sound racing action, the clichéd characters, pseudo-urban dialogue (we're officially calling for a moratorium on the term "buster"), and the use of a T-Mobile Sidekick all work to make the game feel like it's stuck in 2005. The racing is exciting; the packaging isn't.
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