I also gave Midnight Club: LA a spin tonight, just to kill some time. There isn’t much story to it, just race, race, race. It’s an open-world racer in that you roam around the city and find people to race against, often leaving the exact path to take up to you as long as you hit the checkpoints.

It’s said to be fairly difficult, but I haven’t found it too bad so far. The racers available are divided into difficulties, and there’s always some lower-end green/yellow racers to go up against; you just don’t earn as much cash or reputation for them. And even if you lose, you often still earn a little bit of reputation, so races are never a complete waste.

The control itself is very arcadey, not realistic, but it’s still fairly precise, and obstacles and weaving through traffic haven’t really been a problem (people just leap out of the way). It’s very much seat-of-your-pants though, and my losses so far have often involved snap judgments on which path to take that turned out very badly. I think I’ve won about half of the races so far, out of around 8 so far.