What Midnight Club ought to be.
posted by hekifier (WINCHESTER, OH) May 4, 2011
Member since Apr 2011
The concept of taking to the midnight streets to race is an engaging one, but Midnight club consistently ruins it by making races like logic puzzles, where you need to sort a hundred different routes to find that one that works. But Need for Speed Carbon is more traditional, and it's a winner for that.
There's plenty of sexy woman in the game (Nikki!), but you'll need to adjust your focus to come on top in the sprints, checkpoint races, and other race types. There's also boss races, where you'll face a rival who will spam shortcuts, then you'll need to go to the canyons in a duel. You're supposed to follow the opposing driver as closely as possible, avoiding crashing or falling off, then re-do it this time in front and trying not to allow the enemy to score more points. The controls don't always offer the precision you need, but it's a nice change.
There are various control options, but the only few worth using is the wheel, which for some reason you'll need to turn the remote up to navigate menus, and another where you hold the remote forward to accelerate and turn the joystick on the nun-chuck.
The drifting mechanics can occasionally lock on you, causing you to crash and lose many races. It seems the racing engine needed more fine tuning, because this problem can even stop the game from being fun. At least you have a lengthy single player mode, quick races, free roam and cop chases though. The graphics are also really detailed and overflowing with style, suffering from less technical quirks than Undercover.
Like many Black Box efforts, here's another flawed but fun NFS on the Wii. It's exactly what I was hoping Midnight Club would be, but isn't. It's not a terrific game, there are some issues that I couldn't let slide, but it's still fun in it's own right if you're a fan of the series, or just want some solid racing action.
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