Finishing Using a Final Boost With Midnight Club Los Angeles

By the time 2009 rolled around, I had got stuck into plenty of racing games. The previously featured GripShift and Excite Truck, Mario Kart on both DS and Wii, Burnout 3 and Revenge, Flatout: Head On, Test Drive Unlimited, and some rather questionable others [Mini Desktop Racing for one]. But no matter what sort of racing it was, I was at least willing to test the game out.

So in comes Rockstar, most recognised for the GTA games. I’d had a little experience with them, though I was always just driving around rather than doing any actual missions. And then I see a game for the PSP. By Rockstar. That’s not GTA. Midnight Club: LA Remix looked to be a GTA focused exclusively on the cars and racing, similar in format to Test Drive Unlimited. It was clear this was to be my next game, and I enjoyed it to the full.

The arcade feel, free-form nature of the progression, the ability to explore Los Angeles freely, a lot of cars to be driving and upgrading, and plenty of races of various types. Later I’d come to know the Remix map was not the full Los Angeles map, but a modified version of the one used in Midnight Club 2. The Tokyo map from Midnight Club 3 was also included in Remix, but while I completed every event within Los Angeles, I don’t think I ever completed everything within Tokyo.

It was the feel of the driving and the exploration that hooked me most, and I’d spend plenty of time just doing that. Police weren’t around in cruise mode on Remix, so I could do so without fear of losing all my money [which is exactly what happened when I first started LA Complete]. When it did come to the racing, I enjoyed all the events, and trying for the first place on all of them.

The cars had boost that could be used and refilled by driving through petrol stations, but there was also the slipstream boost, where a meter would fill the longer you kept within the air of the car in front, which would then light green for just a short while. That could be used for some easy wins if used right. There’s also the three classes of car bringing their abilities with them, with my favourite being the tuner class and its zone ability – slowing down time to make precision easier.

You might be thinking that this is a short one, and you’d be right. But the story is only half done. See, I’d played one half of the game. I’m not talking about completing Tokyo, but experiencing the full game on a console. By this time, I’d already clocked more than 1000 hours into GTA Online – most of which was racing. When it came to finally experiencing the true Midnight Club LA, I noticed several familiarities with the map of Los Santos.

Yes, Los Santos is based on Los Angeles, but it comes down to more than just that. The zoom in and out of the map – while not fully replicated in GTA V – felt familiar. The cars and the handling of them felt familiar. Even the voices of the pedestrians – not featured in the PSP version – sound as familiar as those wandering the streets of Los Santos. It does indeed feel that plenty of things were the inspiration for the world and mechanics of GTA V.

But with GTA V – and specifically GTA Online – also comes the fact that Midnight Club might never be revived. Los Angeles was the last release, back in 2008. Since then, GTA feels to have started including more racing within its missions, and Online having whole content updates full of racing events. Not to mention the race creator, which was also featured in Midnight Club LA, has also been added to with everything those content updates bring. While I’d like another Midnight Club, I can see how it will never return when the GTA series is so much more popular and can bring Rockstar-based racing to the masses.

Gifting the Love and Life of the Sport With GripShift

 
This is a game that is more liked for its attachment to a particular moment or event, though the game itself is still a good one. Since 1999, I’d been a spectator every British Transplant Games event, supporting my dad who would be taking part. But for those who don’t know, what are the Transplant Games?

Transplantation is the process of replacing an organ within your body that is no longer working thanks to a donor giving one of theirs. It’s an operation that brings new life to those who receive it, and the Transplant Games are a celebration of that new life. They also help raise awareness of the need for transplantation and give thanks to those donor families who have supported it.

In 1999, my Dad had his first operation to replace a kidney, which had been a great success. And in that year, the Games were held in Birmingham. Every year, the Games move to a different city, which offers plenty of opportunities for seeing the sights around the UK. We as a family had travelled to many cities throughout the years and been to many sights within those areas, watching my Dad competing in snooker, darts, and other sports during the event.

It came to a temporary halt in 2011, though, when that kidney started failing and he started on dialysis – which is where a person has to remove waste products and excess fluid to replace with clean fluids owing to kidney failure. Since he was doing peritoneal dialysis, he was doing this manually four times a day. We were waiting for the call which would say a new kidney had been found, and that eventually happened in 2015. That was a memorable moment for many reasons, but he had been gifted life once more. And he’s continued to go to the Games and is now manager for the Birmingham team.

As I said, GripShift is a game liked more for its attachment to a particular moment or event, and it was in 2007 – during a memorable Transplant Games in Edinburgh – that I first got my hands on this game for the PSP. Preowned from Game, while exploring the city centre during an off day from events. I enjoyed seeing the sights and watching the sports happen [friendly competition is advised, but everyone competing is a winner here], but on downtime I’d be playing games on that PSP, and GripShift was the game I’d chosen.

Different from a regular racer, it featured a more puzzle/platformer type experience with courses floating in the air. No resemblance of the real world here. There are three objectives to complete and many levels to complete them on during the challenge mode. Race mode only had two objectives, but they were made harder thanks to opponents racing alongside you and being able to mess things up with items.

For me, none of that really mattered. There was a track editor, and that was all I cared about. I’d be in that editor creating and playing plenty of my own tracks, not even touching those within the game. In fact, I probably got more out of the extra games than the main modes. Forever will I have only progressed to the easy levels on both modes.

I’d bought the Xbox 360 version of this in 2013, and probably because there was no level editor I’d retired it very quickly. Now, six years later, I’m returning to it and having fun with it, despite most of the extras not being there. It gives me a chance to progress through the main modes that for so long I had put off.

I still own the PSP version of GripShift – that same one from Edinburgh – and while I no longer play that version, it’s a reminder of the fun time I have had through the Transplant Games and the people I have met. While I won’t be going to the Games being held in Newport this year, I’m still happy that my Dad continues to live thanks to the gift he’s twice been given, and maybe I’ll be going again next year.

Hopping Around the Spiral With CTR: Nitro-Fueled

As I said in the last post, my family had a PS1 [or more accurately the PSone] and one of the games we had for it was Crash Team Racing. We hadn’t ever got any of the other Crash games before it, so this was my first taste of the Crash Bandicoot series. The Gamecube hadn’t released at this point, so CTR is the first kart racer – and very possibly the first racing game ever – I had played.

Despite never mastering it, I enjoyed playing it up until the point the PSone and everything with it was sold on, which I think was only a few years after it was first bought to swap to the PS2 Slim. I still remembered my time with it, and even though I played many a Mario Kart and other racing games, I still wanted another chance to play it. That would come with the PSP, and the backward compatibility it introduced for select PS1 games. CTR would be among them, and I was playing it once again. I was still terrible at mastering it, though. But I enjoyed zipping through the tracks even if I wasn’t making any progress in Adventure.

CTR followed me to the PSV, where it would be forgotten to start with, but then in 2016 started to see more play time. I even took another run through Adventure – even if I still didn’t get very far. The game had followed me from young times to present day, and then came the Crash Bandicoot trilogy remake, followed by the Spyro trilogy remake, and there was talk of Crash Team Racing getting one too. I’d love for it to happen, I kept thinking, but I doubt it will.

Oh, how I am happy to be proven wrong. Nitro-Fueled is a love letter to the series, and is a solid remake. There’s plenty to be getting stuck into, as not only are all the original tracks and characters here, but even those from the second racer – Nitro Kart. The adventure mode is still the same as ever, though, as it doesn’t include all that extra stuff. Not even a second adventure mode to make use of it. But… this is a remake and not a new game, so it is to be expected.

At first, I just jumped into some singular races to get back into the feel for the controls, then onto the adventure where I took up my old faithful racer – N.Gin. I’ve no idea why he was the one I stuck with most, but the weird scientist just stuck out as a favourite. Of course, that’ll be changing with the Grand Prix content, since there’s one character in particular that I’ve got a lock on wanting to get. It’ll be weird to see Spyro driving a kart, but well worth it.

But the Grand Prix itself offers the usual fare of completing challenges with varying difficulty levels to earn points to go up in tiers, and I’m fond of that system. The grind for points to unlock things rather than the challenges being the unlock keys is something I’m not a fan of. I don’t mind grinding for things, but I’d much rather do it in my own time rather than feel forced into it. Some of the challenges have proven to be fun to aim for, and they do at least get you to venture to parts of the game you might not have tried. The in-game store it also a grind – and a very hefty one – if you aren’t one for playing online. As such, I’m just not interested in looking beyond a quick browse, since the store also rotates new things in every day, so there’s no point trying to aim for something unless you’re near to it anyway.

The game itself is great fun, though, with my favourite thing at the minute being 1v1 capture the flag. It’s a mode where you need to be aware of what the opposing driver is doing, since if they have your flag, you need to stop them before they get to deliver it to their base. But there’s also an extra reason, since if your flag has been taken from its base, you can’t deliver the opposing flag to it until your own has returned. Everything else is just as fun, if a little too chaotic at times during races where a single item can put you back within the pack and into a world of trouble. But if you can pull back a win from that storm, it really is a satisfying experience.