L.A. Rush Impressions

LAS VEGAS--Midway hasn't put out a good, solid arcade-style racing game in quite some time. A look back into the company's deep arcade roots, however, reveals the San Francisco Rush series. The Rush games have always been about big races, crazy shortcuts, and insanely high rates of speed, all of which combine to make the games fairly popular, both in arcades and on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64. For 2005, Midway is planning to release a new racing game for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox that, if Midway has its way, will follow in the footsteps of those arcade classics.

L.A. Rush moves the series south to Los Angeles. The game takes place in an accurate rendition of the Southland area, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 350 miles of drivable roads. Most of the game will see you driving your cars in races against three other opponents. Most of these races will be one-lap "point A to point B"-style races, with plenty of big jumps and shortcuts for you to find in each setting. There will be 50 unique tracks to play through here. But racing isn't the only thing going on in the City of Angels.

Other racing games have tried to tie their races together via a loose story mode. L.A. Rush will have a story mode, but it sounds like it will be a little more meaningful than just a series of cutscenes that play between races. Your goal throughout the story is to reacquire 30 vehicles that were stolen from you by thugs. This will lead to more mission-oriented driving, where you'll have to ram opponents off the road, bust up construction sites and billboards, and other basic, driving-focused objectives. Police will be present in L.A. Rush, and it looks like you'll receive a fine if they can catch up with you.

L.A. Rush will feature licensed vehicles, and in a somewhat shocking move, it seems to have a surprisingly robust damage model for a game with real-life rides. Cars from Chevy, Cadillac, Mitsubishi, and Nissan are just some of the licensed cars that will be available. The game will also feature more than 20 concept cars, at least some of which will be coming from actual car designers. Lastly, you will be able to unlock four cars from San Francisco Rush, though they'll be updated a bit to fit with the times. Along with the licensed cars come licensed car parts from manufacturers like AEM, Yokohama, and Brembo. The crew from West Coast Customs, better known as "the guys that fix cars on Pimp My Ride," will also be present in some form. Other celebrity involvement has yet to be announced, but Midway has claimed that the talent is "extensive."

Though Midway didn't show a lot of the game in motion, what was shown looks nice. Like True Crime before it, L.A. Rush seems to do a convincing job of rendering the streets of Los Angeles, with distinct neighborhoods like Long Beach, Hollywood, Santa Monica, and, yes, Compton. Midway showed off a few specific areas, like the Santa Monica pier and the Pacific Coast Highway. They look sharp. The pier, in particular, makes for a nice demo, because it shows off the game's destructible environments. Not only can you do the standard breakage, like busting up park benches, but you can actually take down the Ferris wheel by slamming hard into one of its cars. You'll also be able to bust through the Hollywood sign, if that's your thing. Traffic on the roads and freeways seems to be fairly thick, though it's doubtful that it will be as maddeningly stop and go as actual LA traffic. Since the roads of Los Angeles can be a winding, confusing place, the game will have a GPS system that will guide you, turn by turn, to your next destination. You'll also have a very GTA-like map that appears onscreen as you drive.

So far, L.A. Rush looks sharp. Though we weren't able to play the game for ourselves, the PlayStation 2 version on display looked like it moved fast and had good, long draw distances. Things like plans for online play and some of the games modes have yet to be revealed. Look for Midway's attempt to carve out its own shortcut-laden niche in the street racing genre later this year.