Midnight Club 2 is nothing more than its name. A club of reckless drivers get together each night and speed through a city passing checkpoints, scattering civilians, toppling lamp posts and launching from ramps to finish first. As the generic night driver, you move through the ghost ranks of this illegal sport taking the cars of your fallen adversaries and racing against ever more difficult racers. It's a simple and realistic enough story but silly in-thought soliloquies and commentary by your newest foe/teacher between and during each race trivialize the grit in the game. Most of the characters are nerdy pseudo-baddasses that are either too friendly or too mean to seem even slightly realistic.

Alas, the gameplay makes up for any shortcomings in the storyline. Rockstar was obviously not content tossing another racing game into the sea of generic racers. From beginning to end Midnight Club is a ferocious race with plenty of collisions and destruction, street racers ripping through the streets in a swarm, through canals and buildings, over the expressway and into the hills over LA. This is certainly one of the most engaging racers to date with a slew of cars to unlock, large city environments in Paris, LA and Tokyo, customizable race tracks and unlockable abilities like the slipstream turbo, in-air controls and two wheel driving. Tutorials are quick and easy to understand and the abilities are essential for winning each race. Traffic in the narrow Parisian streets is that much more navigable when you know how to use the two-wheel feature and the slipstream is invaluable for taking a last minute lead.

The diversity of the environments is vast which makes each race pretty different. The cities have been remarkably designed so you'll recognize corners, landmarks and neighborhoods if you take your eyes off the road for a second. A few times I flew past the Los Angeles Convention Center and I think I even saw the hotel I stayed in for E3 2002. On the plus or minus side depending on your preference, the races are insanely difficult requiring a mixture of perfect control, use of special attributes and shortcuts and peering at the side map from time to time. Ultimately, you'll redo each race nearly 10 times before you can even come close to finishing it. Missing one turn and having to backtrack less than a block can send you from first place to sixth without much chance of taking the lead again even with the enemy racers making mistakes and crashing themselves. Once you memorize the track the competition becomes more realistic and winning provides that old school satisfaction that is missing from so many racing games.

Graphically, Midnight Club 2 is somewhere between GTA Vice City and Gran Turismo 2. Car models and environment are more complete with reflections, exhaust more lights and building details than VC but slightly down the scale from GT 2. A consistent framerate extinguishes any animation problems while the attention to detail in the city designs is uncanny. It's great to go flying past Notre Dame, through the Bastille neighborhood and down the riverside to Emile Zola and under Le Tour Eiffel. Most things are placed well if not accurately and it's hard not to appreciate Rockstar's expertise in the recreation of a city. Replays don't help much with a lack of camera control and bad lighting and overall, the dusky illumination of the entire game takes something away from the graphical appearance.

Luckily, Midnight Club 2 controls like a GTA game. Sliding into turns, spinning around 180 degrees, side-swiping competition, avoiding the cops and taking to the air are all fun and easy to pick up. There are just so many things to consider while flying down the road such as intersection collisions, planned collisions, knocking down lamp posts and other strategies for thwarting racers behind you. It all just works so well and makes for such addicting gameplay that it's hard to put the game down.