L.A. Rush E3 2005 Preshow Hands-On

The San Francisco Rush series started out under the Atari Games banner back in 1996. The arcade game featured what were, at the time, pretty great graphics, and the shortcut-filled gameplay was successful at getting people to pump the machines full of quarters. Over time, track updates and a full-fledged sequel, S.F. Rush 2049, were released, and various versions of the game were ported to home consoles. Now, Midway is reinventing the series for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 with L.A. Rush, a street-racing game with a story mode, licensed vehicles, and celebrity voices.

Like True Crime before it, L.A. Rush will take place on the virtual streets of Los Angeles. But you won't be running around on foot and busting criminals here. L.A. Rush is strictly a street racing game, featuring a number of licensed cars, real-life Los Angeles landmarks, and more than 80 different races to enter in the single-player mode. In an interesting twist, the single-player game in L.A. Rush is a story-driven mode. It seems that you, as a local street racing hotshot, have had your entire garage of hot, custom cars stolen from you by a rival. You'll start out with one modest vehicle and have to claw your way back to the top of L.A.'s underground racing world. You'll do this by winning races. Races come in different varieties and are mostly similar to what you'd expect in an open-city racing game. You'll encounter checkpoint races, point-to-point races, and so on. You can also enter a cruise mode and just drive around the city, but this mode wasn't working properly in the version Midway displayed. The Xbox version of the game will definitely have an online mode, though details about it are currently unavailable. The PlayStation 2 version may also have online support, though Midway representatives wouldn't fully confirm its existence as of this writing.

When racing, you'll occasionally pick up nitro boosts, which you can pop off at any point during the race. Overall, the handling is fast and loose, with an emphasis on huge slideouts and other over-the-top vehicle physics, though each car should handle a little differently. On top of that, you'll be able to earn money and customize your cars by taking them to West Coast Customs. This is the chop shop made famous by the MTV show Pimp My Ride, and the crew from WCC will also appear in the game, complete with speaking roles as they trick out your cars with different licensed aftermarket parts. There's no word on whether you'll be able to install a Ms. Pac-Man machine in the back of your van or build a tiny conveyor belt with PSPs velcroed to it, though.

Graphically, L.A. Rush seems to be running at a decent frame rate, and the one race that was available for us to try had a good amount of traffic on the city streets. Plus, the race course took us around a variety of spots, including right through the Hollywood sign.

The racing in L.A. Rush seems reasonably sharp at this point, though it remains to be seen if the story-driven nature of the single-player mode will add to or subtract from the experience. The game is currently slated to ship this holiday season for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.