Midnight Club 2 spawns off of street racing. Made by Rockstar, surprisingly, this game amazed me so much. Its prequel Midnight Club 1 was a big disappointment to me. But if you are a big fan of speed games, get this one. It makes its prequel Midnight Club look like. And this is in the words of GameInformer,”It makes Midnight Club cars look like 78’ pintos with flat tires.” If you are a big fan of Rockstars games, and you haven't tried it, get it. The story goes along as you being a street racer stumble along another fellow street racer named Moses, this guy Moses is your bud. He helps you out on races, and gives you tips (gives you abilities as soon as you beat a racer). You beat him and get his car (Citi), after that point you get introduced to nos.. And other racers. The other racers are on your map, all you have to do is race up to them and flick your beams bam your in a street race with other people. If you win you get their car, and sometimes ability. This game has 3 cities, when I heard that…I didn’t like the idea too much, but the 3 cities are huge, your not chained to a track, each racer’s personality will lead you to his place to race it out, like Angel, the racer you encounter in L.A., he will lead you to the rich part of town.

The controls are awesome, like any other driver. X to accelerate, square reverse, and so on. But heres where it gets tricky, and it drifts off from other drivers, the LI L2 R2 RI (note, these are the PS2 controls) are combined with the X, square, triangle, and circle to do abilities that you learn from other drivers. As soon as you start you better be aware of the controls, start in cruise and learn everything because, as soon as you get in a street race one fender bender can ruin the whole race. I remember when I accidentally crashed into the back of a player; I just hit reset that’s at the point you know you love the game. But otherwise the controls are fine.

The graphics for Midnight Club 2 are awesome, exactly what ps2 can run, and then some. The car models are so .. Life-like, the environments in all 3 cities are very nice. The cities all sport a different look, with LA being kind of murky and expansive, and Paris showing off occasional cobblestone roads and lots of narrow streets, while Tokyo is vertical, urban and metallic. RockStar did a mighty fine job on this one. Everything looks real, from the nos to the trees you crash into, the best aspect is when you’re challenging a racer, and they look pretty real. Another thing I think you might enjoy is when you knock down a pole the sparks look pretty fine, along with the smoke coming from injured car part, and when you crash into a parking meter, coins will fly every where. Or your beams, plus the way a light glares on the top of your hood makes the graphics for Midnight Club 2 easy on the eyes.

The sound was really nice; you could hear a lot of things like pedestrians yelling at you. Your engine revving up and your nos screaming down the street. Another nice aspect is the radio, it may not have the best tunes, but a few nice songs like “put your top down” by Tre Little. But after that the songs are bad, just techno, trance. The downside is you won’t be able to open your favorite song in cruise, some songs only open up in specific races. The music disappointed me so much; it just led me to turn off the music. You can hear a lot of things like your, your opponent racer teasing you.

Overall this game floated my boat, the fact that the A.I. isn’t artificial retardness is really nice, the cops will do anything to slow you down and stop you, the other racers will take as much shortcuts as possible, but make sure the game isn’t on ‘EASY’ it will ruin everything. But getting back, this game is worth every penny you put into it deserves more then $50.00, with all the extras such as 2player CTF or detonation, this game will keep you glued, the game has a lot of nice cheats. But I advise you to use them in 2p, or arcade mode. But dose this game deserve a 10? Just like PSM said. “When a game comes around like this, that is this good. It changes the genre completely.” This game will leave you in awe; Rockstar did an A+ job. Leaving you with an awesome game, with a nos flavored cherry on top.