Midnight Club 2 consists of taking part in illegal street races in three majors cities.
Each race allows you to drive at high speeds on city streets and speedways, while avoiding traffic, crossing intersections and outrunning the cops, while battling 1st to the finish line. All the races start off easy but gets more challenging as the game processes. After you win certain number of races and beat your opponent, you win their vehicle.
There are 4 different modes in the game, there is Career, Arcade, Race Editor and also Networked game. The Career is the main piece of the game, where you race and unlock many of the cars. Starting out in Los Angeles, you race many other racers and finishing each city against the city champion before moving on into the next city. The three cities are Los Angeles, Paris and Tokyo.
The vehicles featured in the game have responsive controls. Different vehicles can be used in different races as the game goes on. Some vehicles have better speed, acceleration and handling. You get better cars as you process through the game.
The other features on cars are ‘Nitro’, which gives you a boost of speed when you need it the most and also ‘In Air controls’, where you control the car in mid air to provide a safe landing. Nitro and Air controls are unlocked early in the game. Motorcycles have ‘Weight Transfer’, which allows the player to perform sharp turns and can pull off wheelies, this is also unlocked when you unlock your first motorcycle. This adds a good variety to riding motorcycles unfortunately motorcycles don’t have nitro.
Each race is set during midnight, dusk or dawn, also different weather conditions are featured in the game, which can either be clear, fog or rain. The weather affects the gameplay and adds a small extra challenging while racing.
The driver AI is excellent and they can navigate the city well enough to beat you, they also take diffident routes to each checkpoint, each and every time you start the same race.
Each city is model with accurate detail and provides shortcuts and is tweaked to make racing around the city more challenging. Landmarks are also included in each city, LAX and Hollywood are presented in Los Angeles, the Eiffel tower and the infamous catacombs are featured in Paris and the Tokyo Tower in Tokyo. The traffic is also modeled and pedestrians are added to the cities counterpart. This provides a really excellent environment within the game.
The other game modes add good value to the game. The Arcade mode, where you can return to play the races you previously raced and won in the Career mode, cruise around a city or have a go at the circuit races, which allows you unlock addition vehicles. Two players can use the arcade mode in spilt screen.
There is also a Battle mode, Which consist of two games, the first is Capture the Flag, where you drive around the city, grab a flag at the checkpoint, carry it and store it at another checkpoint to score. The other battle mode is Detonate, where you drive to a checkpoint to get a detonator and carry it to another checkpoint, which detonates all the other vehicles in the current race to score, this is more like a deathmatch in racing. Both modes have special items for other racers to collect and use in the game, which makes the game more interesting. The Race editor allows you to create custom races for yourself or your friends in the multiplayer races.
Lastly, the Networking mode is available to play online to players around the world or with other Playstation 2’s connected in the household. You can also adjust the weather, environment and other settings in Arcade, Race Editor and Network game.
The game graphics are sharp and colourful. Each city and car are well modeled, which makes this a very visually impressive game of its time. There are sharp reflections, which appear on the vehicles body and stay out throughout the whole race and don’t suffer in game slow downs. The weather and environment surrounding were beautiful created. There are also movies for each racer you encounter, before and after you race in the career mode, which I liked.
The soundtrack mainly consists of Hip-hop and Rock but a few soundtracks are Drum and Bass and Techno. It may not be for everyone’s liking, but I can see why Rockstar added this kind of soundtrack to an underground racing game. The voice actor does a good job, not just for the other personalized racers, but also for the pedestrians in each city.
My only minor criticisms of the game is that there’s not enough police in races, the soundtrack may not be for everyone and some of the games races are extremely hard for beginner and novice players. There also could have been more motorcycles.
Midnight Club 2 represents challenging gameplay and excellent visuals. I really enjoyed playing this game. I would recommend veteran racers to own this game. Other players give it a try, but you wouldn’t be disappointed. I rate Midnight Club 2, an 8 out of 10.