Midnight Club II

Midnight Club II carried the street racing of the first game over into three genuinely inspired big cities - Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo - and gave players the freedom to move freely between illegal races, bets, and a one-on-one duel called Battle. Besides cars, motorcycles also returned to the game, which, together with the variety of settings, gave the series a unique character compared to competing tuning games focused solely on automobiles. The player could choose between several game modes, from classic sprints to endurance races across the whole city, gradually unlocking new vehicles and locations as they built up enough reputation among local racers.

The Xbox version benefited from the console's power when rendering sprawling city districts, night lighting, and reflections on wet asphalt, which rounded out the atmosphere of illegal night races taking place out of the police's sight. The controls were fast and arcade-like, emphasizing drifting through sharp corners and the tactical use of shortcuts, which were key to victory in dense traffic full of civilian vehicles. The musical accompaniment, made up of electronic music and rock, underscored the energy and pace of driving across all three metropolises, which differed from each other not only in architecture but also in the behavior of the virtual traffic.

Midnight Club II was critically praised for its sense of speed and big-city atmosphere and helped the Rockstar Games series establish itself as a full-fledged competitor to Need for Speed in the field of street racing. The more open approach to cities and emphasis on exploratory driving influenced the following entry as well as a number of other street racing games that tried to offer similar freedom. Today the game stands out as a notable example of an early generation of open-world racing titles, though technically it naturally lags behind later sequels in its own series.

Why play it: For fans of early open-world racing through big-city streets who will appreciate the atmosphere and sense of speed, even though it naturally lags behind later series entries technically.