The Achilles Heel is the high level of difficulty. If you make one wrong move, chances are you are not going to win the race because the AI racers are just too aggressive and too good. Sometimes rubber band AI will come into effect both when you are behind and ahead. There’s no rhyme or reason to it outside of infuriating you to the point of throwing your controller against the wall.

The good news is that you can lose as much as you want and still increase your experience meter as well as cash on hand and continue through the story mode that almost seems dropped into the game isn’t developed too well. The unfortunate part is that you won’t be unlocking cars and parts as quickly as you could if you were winning the races. There are plenty of races where you are leading up to the final turn and a car gets in your way, you slam into it and down the finishing order you go. You have to drive almost perfectly, so if you’ve played previous games in the series you should have some idea of what kind of tight driving is needed and how important it is to get a fast car as soon as you can.

Online play has ten modes in it that run the gamut from racing to a capture the flag type of option. The important feature is that you can play with up to 16 people at the same time. There is a chink in the armor though in that if you play non-ranked matches it is once again a battle of the haves versus the have nots since you have no control over the class of cars and bikes that will be in a race, so you can be easily outmatched or you can outmatch everyone. This means you will lose to anyone that has a better car than you even if they make a few mistakes along the way and it can kill the fun.

Midnight Club Los Angeles is an excellent game brought down by its maddening difficulty level. It’s unfortunate to see Rockstar San Diego fall back into that ditch with this game seeing as how the rest of the package is loaded with arcade racing goodness.

Questions or comments? We'd love to hear from you .