I wound up spending a bit more time in Midnight Club: LA than expected while waiting for the PS3 system update, and got a handful more races done. It turns out that the AI isn’t infallible after all; a few times, one of them would get spun around and fall way behind, and in one freeway race the opponent hit traffic and got so far behind that she didn’t even show up on the minimap anymore.

I was initially afraid that there wouldn’t be much choice in races, since very few of the green and yellow racers that I could plausibly beat were on the map, but just randomly driving around the map has caused a lot more of them to pop up, so there’s plenty of choice now. Even at these lower difficulties though, I often have to restart the race once or twice thanks to an unlucky hit on a wall or car in the opposite direction, or realizing I made a really bad turn choice.

I’ve also unlocked some performance upgrade options, so now I have to decide whether I want to start upgrading the Golf GTI I started out with, or save up for one of the better cars.