Previews// Midnight Club: Los Angeles - South Central

The last car I got to hop in was easily the best: the sexy Mercedes CLK63 MLE. It’s fast, with good acceleration and a breakneck top speed, not to mention a pretty sharp turning circle when using the handbrake. That was a Godsend to me, having missed plenty of corners leading up to checkpoints, including a particularly nasty 90-degree angle under a freeway during the ‘South Central Tour’.

Races are designed with the usual Midnight Club flare – hectic street bouts with souped-up cars slip-streaming past one another, speeding across oncoming traffic lanes to reach checkpoints that only the master of analogue stick-tweaking can tackle. Carnage ensued from a split second lapse of concentration (as happened to me many times), while expert overtaking lead to stylish victory. The courses in South Central satisfy this and then some, with exploration off the beaten track leading to shortcuts and checkpoints leading you over playgrounds, under and over freeways and across many red lights.

This is all aided by the music in Midnight Club: Los Angeles, and in South Central you will get to add even more tracks in your playlists. I'm told there will be a special deal with iTunes as well, where you will be able to set up your own Midnight Club playlist from the tracks in the game, hook your Xbox Live or PlayStation Network account to iTunes and automatically download your chosen tracks to your hard drive. It’s certainly an interesting way to explore games' music.

Not even the music could help me win many races, though. But even though I was doing particularly (some may spectacularly – I was putting on quite a show) poorly, I was enjoying myself and that’s what counts, really. I will stand up and say I had a particularly off day, but even if you have a case of gaming bad luck, there are countless opportunities to drive off ramps, boost into your opponent’s side and off the track, spin around making donuts and piss off the cops. And you don’t even have to race to achieve all of that.

Rockstar has split the downloadable content here into two, as well – you can either download the whole South Central map for free and just enjoy cruising around with your mates, or you can opt to purchase all the new cars, challenges, music and features for 800 Microsoft Points (or £7.99 in PlayStation Network money). Joy can be had here whichever route you take, and if you love your Midnight Club doused with plenty of fresh challenge, South Central is bound to be your first – and probably not last – port of call.