There's a bit of a story involved here, wherein your racer is introduced to the nightlife (and day life I guess) of LA street racing, thru some local crews and acquaintances. Like in Rockstar's GTA titles, you slowly work your way up the ranks, but thru a level up system of sorts that earns you reputation, allowing you to unlock different races and opponents spread out thru the city. There's never a shortage of things to do, oftentimes there will be 3 or more different races or people you can challenge on the map, all of which are either shown on screen in your mini-map, or you can bring up a large city map to help you locate new events. Also, each of these races shown on the map are color coded for difficulty, so if you're having some trouble competing early on, you'll definitely want to choose the easier races until you become familiar with the mechanics of the game.

There are a small variety of race types to encounter, and you'll generally face off with four (or more) opponents at a time. Certain events will require you to win multiple races, while others will consist of just a single competition. When you're trying to go up against a particular racer in a one on one bout, you can even race that individual to the starting line to gain some bonus rep, or you can just opt to warp straight to the start of the race and skip out on the opportunity.

The storyline isn't all that fascinating, and you're never really going to get invested into the events or the people that come and go from your virtual racers life. Instead, the real impressive aspect of the game is the scenery and recreation of LA that's been done here. The city itself is pretty huge, and while we might have grown used to something like this from Burnout Paradise, it's still really cool to see landmarks and sections of towns that you might be able to identify provided you're a bit familiar with the area. There are also a ton of short cuts available on the map, detailed on the mini-map by light gray areas. When racing just about anything is open game, so it pays to try and get used to the map and remember where certain short cuts are that can help you out.

Visually, even outside of the city recreation, the rest of the game is equally impressive. Cars all look beautiful, and the game even features a bit of crash damage to heighten the realism at play. The only thing that doesn't stand up that well on the visual side of things is the character models that pop up in cut scenes. They're not particularly horrible, but they don't carry the same attention to detail that the city and cars seem to possess. The soundtrack is pretty solid as well, offering up tracks from various artists that match the feel of the game and the city that you're toying around in.

The car selection does seem a bit limited, especially when compared to other series like Need for Speed, but the ones that are available are definitely fun to play with. You can perform small upgrades to various systems, but nothing that's on the scale of sim racers. This is definitely an arcade racer, and I think fans of that type of racing game (like myself), will definitely enjoy Midnight Club LA.

Midnight Club also features a boost system like many other titles, but it can only be charged up by staying directly behind your opponent, like drafting in NASCAR. There's a visual effect to let you know what line you're looking to fill, and your boost meter in the bottom right will fill as long as you can keep lined up correctly. However, if you fall out of place it will start to drop, so you'll want to really keep in control until it's completely filled. Boost is typically what you'll need to master to really start winning races early, but keep in mind that gaining an early lead will negate your ability to even use boost, so it's not always wise to jump ahead in the beginning of the race.

Winning or losing will gain you experience and rep points, so early on even if you can't hit top place you'll at least be gaining points towards advancing, which is nice so losing doesn't feel like you've completely wasted your time. If you lose an event though, and don't restart or retry, then that event will be over for good as well. Like I mentioned earlier though, there's no shortage in events to take part in, and as long as you don't feel like the need to win every single race in the game, you won't miss out on anything big.

There's also a police presence in the game, and they'll pop up on the game radar on occasion, letting you know if you're under watch or not. If you're spotted doing anything illegal (typically speeding), then they'll be on to you in an instant. You'll listen in on their radio chatter, which will alert you to whether or not they're able to keep up or if more cars are being pulled into the chase. The police chases I had quite a bit of difficulty with myself, and found the cop AI to be pretty tough to outrun, even with taking short cuts and quick turns it was really difficult to shake these guys off. Also, if you get pulled over you might just get a ticket, or you might get arrested, it really depends on the nature of the offense you've committed. Keep in mind if you're just getting ticketed you can opt to speed off when the cop is walking up to the car, which is pretty amusing the first couple times you pull it off.

Topping things off, there's a 16 player online mode which is pretty fun provided you can find a full game to participate in. I didn't have anything in the way of connections issues or lag for the most part, and there's a solid selection of race types to pick from that'll keep you interested for a little while. I'm not sure how much of a community will support this title online, but for now it seems to have filled out pretty well, and you shouldn't have any issues jumping into a game or two.

Basically, I really enjoyed Midnight Club LA, but I was hardly amazed by it. It's a really solid arcade style racer with a lot of flashy stuff going for it, but it doesn't really do anything new or exciting, and it's not going to be the game to replace a couple other high profile racing titles on the 360 or PS3. Still, it's fun enough to play thru the main story mode at least once, and to toy around with the various online aspects. Definitely worth checking out, but I'd go with a rental before tossing down the money for the game at full price.