Midnight Club: Los Angeles

Midnight Club: Los Angeles is a 2008 racing video game developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games. It is the latest installment in the Midnight Club series.

Why It's Best to See Los Angeles at 245mph

 * 1) You can purchase 67 different vehicles (58 regular cars, 5 police cars and 4 motorcycles). The South Central DLC and Complete Edition adds more content such as 15 new rims, which can be applied in the garage for free and drivable cop cars including the eponymous "South Central" district.
 * 2) Great atmosphere.
 * 3) The map of Los Angeles is the equivalent of three maps in 3: DUB Edition combined even with the South Central DLC mentioned above.
 * 4) Outstanding graphics thanks to the usage of RAGE engine, which was also used in Grand Theft Auto IV and V.
 * 5) Awesome soundtrack such as "Snake Eyes" by Plump DJs, "1,000,000", "Discipline" by Nine Inch Nails and "Mercury" by Bloc Party. Also, you can edit them and add to your own playlist.
 * 6) Overall good gameplay mechanics.
 * 7) Great customization, in which aside from having robust exterior customization from bodykits, wheels, paint jobs, etc... they can also customize their car's interior, such as steering wheels, gauges and front seats, as well as repainting their car's interior.
 * 8) *Also, it is possible to customize the motorcycles' body parts, each having two options for tails, tanks and cowls.
 * 9) Unlike in the previous game, Special Abilities can now be used in any vehicle (eg. Zone being originally exclusive to Tuners, Sport Bikes and Exotics in 3: DUB Edition can now be even used on Muscle, Luxury, SUV, Lowrider and Police cars)
 * 10) Lengthly career mode with nearly 100 missions to beat (including the South Central Premium Upgrade DLC).
 * 11) *Once you defeat Booke and become the City Champion, five vehicle-type champions (eg. Pete for Exotic Supercars), can challenge the player, provided they have 35 wins in that vehicle type after unlocking Group 4 Vehicles at Champion Rank (16,500 Reputation Points).
 * 12) The game features Need for Speed: Underground 2-esque free roam mode, also featuring actual cops during the said mode.
 * 13) In the PSP version, LA Remix, you'll unlock the exclusive Tokyo career featuring new racers to beat including the new boss and the leader of the eponymous "Mid Night Club", Yamagata.
 * 14) First game in the series where you can drive in daytime without the need to use lights.
 * 15) All customization and cars/motorcycles would be free after the player buys the garage for $1,000,000.
 * 16) The game can be a great tribute to the unreleased licensed video game based on The Fast and the Furious, planned to be developed by Genki and published by mh:crappygames:Vivendi Universal Games.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The motorcycles, especially the 2008 Ducati 1098R and the 2007 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-14 are extremely overpowered, even shown to have higher stats than the Saleen S7 Twin Turbo (even when it is maxed out), the game's fastest car, despite their low cost and extremely low damage tolerance.
 * 2) The Goal Attacks can be somewhat tricky and time consuming to play through for a total of 170 Gamerscore/three trophies.
 * 3) *This mode can glitch out, as if one completed a South Central DLC goal attack before completing all regular game Goal Attacks, there is a chance that the Goal Attacks will stop registering, breaking their save game and preventing it from earning any yet to be won achievements, including "True Dedication".
 * 4) The Audi R8 4.2 FSI quattro (Type 42) and the TIS Modular Rims were originally available via Rockstar Social Club until May 31, 2014. Now it's impossible to obtain these without hacking the save file (the Saleen Mustang S302 Extreme (S-197) in the original cover featured one of these rims, and the R8 being driven by the South Central garage owner Doc). In the PSP version, however, it is given to the player for free after beating Booke.
 * 5) Speaking of the PSP Remix version:
 * 6) * It's a reskin of Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition as it recycles Midnight Club 2's L.A. map in order to fit into the game's UMD. On the other hand, it features the updated Tokyo map from the aforementioned game's Remix version in order to compensate the hardware limitations.
 * 7) * Also, half of the cars from the original version can only be driven in certain cities such as the Saleen S7 Twin Turbo being only available in Los Angeles or the Mazda RX-7 (FD3S) and the DUB Editions in Tokyo. Also, no vehicle interiors due to hardware limitations.
 * 8) * The Race Editor was cut and you can't fully edit the soundtrack.
 * 9) * The customization is similar to Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition's customization, but with body parts, rims (except certain rims) from the PS3/360, paints and some vinyls heavily being from Midnight Club 3.
 * 10) The game originally had a frustrating difficulty spike due to the rubberband AI until a patch fixed this issue.
 * 11) After beating the main storyline, all parts and cars becomes free to buy which makes it feel quite meaningless.
 * 12) The game can sometimes crash, the case being the PlayStation 3 version.
 * 13) Trophies are now unobtainable online due to the closure of online services for PlayStation 3, and it also makes it impossible to earn a Platinum trophy.
 * 14) * However, the Xbox 360's servers remain online except for Rate My Ride, only keeping two achievements unobtainable.
 * 15) Pink slips, while thankfully having only a few before it no longer becomes available for the rest of the game, is basically a nightmare and can be completely unfair at times if you're unfortunate. If your game freezes or your console suddenly shuts off (mainly from a power outage) and you boot the game back on, your ride will be taken away as a result of this. The same can happen when you try and quit the game when participating in a pink slip race. Thankfully, you can take back your ride by racing it.
 * 16) *However, the player can circumvent this by turning off their Autosave before doing a Pink Slip race in order to prevent their vehicle from being taken away.
 * 17) Certain songs, such as Electric Feel (Justice Remix) by MGMT, Reach for the Sky by Social Distortion and Timebomb by Beck have been removed from the Xbox One/Series X Backwards Compatibility version of the game due to their licenses expiring.
 * 18) Some cars' sounds are a bit off, such as the 1999 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec (R34), which runs a 2.6 liter twin-turbocharged inline-6 and the 2008 Audi RS4 (B7), which runs a 4.2 liter V8 FSI using a rotary-like engine sound in-game.

Tips

 * 1) Before doing any of the goal attacks, avoid the South Central races in Goal Attack as there's a glitch that happens where the objectives will no longer register on the list of Goal Attack races if one were to complete a DLC goal attack race before completing all regular goal attack races, therefore preventing one from earning either the True Dedication achievement/trophy.
 * 2) You may want to avoid buying any new cars or visual customization until you complete the garage deal for $1,000,000 as you may waste a lot of money, and must race more to grind the endgame requirement. Just use the Lamborghini Murciélago Roadster DUB Edition that you will win from the Downtown DUB Tournament to complete the game's main story.
 * 3) After obtaining the 2004 Lamborghini Murciélago Roadster DUB Edition from the Downtown DUB Tournament on Hard Difficulty, use the said Lamborghini from the said tournament for the rest of the game, but make sure to upgrade it after Level 2 Performance Parts have been unlocked. After beating Booke (and possibly Exotic Champion Pete), sell the Lamborghini and any other vehicles to get to $1,000,000 to get everything to be free.

Trivia

 * The Land Rover Range Rover Sport (L320) that is won from the South Central Ballerz Tournament has a license plate reading YORWINR, a reference to the infamous "You're Winner" line from Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.