Rockstar San Diego’s Midnight Club is an elite arcade racing series—challenged only by Criterion and the Burnout franchise. This latest version’s claim to fame is that it faithfully recreates the city of Los Angeles. Those who actually live there could vouch more for it, but there are many landmarks that are easily identifiable. The whole of Los Angeles is not recreated here, but a good deal of it is. This level of real world attachment helps drive the entire game.

The game is certainly a looker with fantastic graphical representations of the cars and the weather effects as well as the day/night shift. This game was built on the Rage engine that was used for both Table Tennis and Grand Theft Auto IV. Add all the landmarks and real life advertisements such as Best Buy stores and the LA Convention Center and it’s a graphical tour de force.

The game opens with your character just having moved into Los Angeles from the east coast and joining up with a couple friends who point you to the local garage where you can upgrade your choice of car. After visiting the garage and seeing everything you can do, it’s off to navigate and take part in races around Los Angeles.

Often you will get calls on your T-Mobile Sidekick that will announce major races or challenges around the area and you can press the Back button to zoom out from your location in L.A. and see the whole city with all the challenges available. You simply choose one, hit A and the mark shines high into the sky while you drive towards it.

Unfortunately there is no GPS route marker. Once near the car that is highlighted you flash your headlights with the Y button and the race either begins or you race to the beginning of the challenge. The problem with the latter is that you need to remember to situate yourself the same way as your opponent or you will already be at a disadvantage because you need to pull a 180 in order to start toward the destination.