L.A Rush

L.A. Rush is the fourth installment in the Rush series of video games. It was released in North America for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles on October 10, 2005 and on October 21 in Europe. The PC version was released on November 4 in Europe. PlayStation Portable version was released on October 30, 2006 named Rush. Many details were revealed at E3 in May 2005. The game is free-roaming with races similar to those in Need for Speed: Underground 2. The GPS map can have a point assigned to a certain location and then the point shows up on the radar during gameplay. The game features voice talent from Orlando Jones, Bill Bellamy, and Twista. In addition to the console versions and PC version it was to be available on Gizmondo.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Intense racing that feels like Midnight Club Series.
 * 2) Great soundtrack.
 * 3) 30 licensed cars plus 20 Midway Concept cars which contains 50 cars in total.
 * 4) Good physics.
 * 5) The city of Los Angeles looks exactly to its real life counterpart.
 * 6) 5 districts to choose in Los Angeles. Hollywood, Santa Monica, South Central, South Bay and Downtown.
 * 7) The cheat that makes the traffic going extremely fast is vastly fun.
 * 8) Impressive in-camera stunts.
 * 9) Aggressive cops and the enemies in Acquire missions.
 * 10) For PS2 and Xbox users there's a cheat that you can drive a locked car highlighting a locked car you want, unplug your controller and plug it again, exit the garage and you're driving a locked car, meaning that players can use the Saleen S7 or the Midway Concept 20 (a widebody Checker Marathon taxi car) right at the start of the game.
 * 11) For PC users if enter PLAYER? as your name, you receive $2.147.483.647 of money, all cars unlocked in stock forms and all events unlocked.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) You cannot customize your cars as you like. The cars are customized by West Coast Customs by default. To put salt on the word, you cannot change the color of your cars while the rivals had different colours. To make the things worse there are no trainers or hacks to do this.
 * 2) *While American cars looks taster, some of the japanese cars are ricer like the Nissan 240SX (S14), the Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec-V (B15), the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII (CT9A), the Dodge Neon SRT-4 etc:.
 * 3) San Fernando Valley is missing.
 * 4) Rubberband AI is rather poor and, in some cases, they end up slowing down and making the race rather easy.
 * 5) Some cheats although there are many pages with those cheats doesn't work such as the No Police, and Always finish first in races.
 * 6) The races and missions while good, can be repetitive after a while.
 * 7) In the "updated" PSP release, the Los Angeles map is separated in several boroughs due to hardware limitations. Also, some of the missions and cars are missing.
 * 8) The PC port is a huge mess.
 * 9) Unlike Midnight Club series, with the exception of the very first race, you must pay fees to start the race. While is not bad enough, if you lose the race, you must repay the fees to start again. Worse, if you didn't disable the autosave, the game saves automatically before starting.

Reception
Many reviewers have been critical of the game. One common criticism is that the option to customize the cars was poorly realized; players cannot modify them themselves, instead, the car is automatically upgraded by the West Coast Customs crew. GamesRadar says: "Roll your vehicle into the garage and they'll kit it out with what they feel like".

L.A. Rush has also been criticized for not including every area of Los Angeles; for example, the San Fernando Valley was excluded. A criticism among fans is that the game is too realistic in comparison to the earlier Rush games which featured exaggerated fantasy locations and game physics.

Not all reaction was negative. The realistic handling in the game was welcomed by some as being comparable to the handling in Juiced and Need for Speed: Underground 2.

The game features many licensed cars such as the Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec-V, the Subaru Impreza WRX STI, the Nissan Skyline GTR R34, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VII, Nissan 350z, Muscle cars, which include the Chevrolet Camaro (as seen on the cover), and SUVs such as the Cadillac Escalade and the Dodge Ram (among other vehicles). Up to 30 licensed cars are unlockable in the game. It also contained 20 Midway concept cars. In total, 50 vehicles.