Every once in a great while a truly novel, fantastic game is made. Not often, a good idea actually chews its way through the messy politics of developer-publisher relations and gets a green light. The execution on the part of the developers is sometimes but seldom flawless, and a game is technically sound. And if you’re lucky, the combined efforts of designers, testers and artists poetically convene, boldly stating that this is how you make video games, you numb-skulls!

But most of the time development is hijacked by apes and what you actually get is a leftover pile of their crap. And in this case specifically you’re left with Rockstar’s Midnight Club II.

It’s not worth getting worked up over another bad video game. There’s just something infuriating about seeing something that could’ve been so good, a game that does so many things well, and had its designers not had their heads firmly planted up their asses could’ve been a whole lot of fun. But Midnight Club II is not a lot of fun, and after just a couple of hours the game’s fatal flaw is as conspicuous as fire on a dark hill.

Let’s be fair for a moment. There are actually a lot of good things to be said about Midnight Club II.

Midnight Club II’s general game design is surprisingly solid and is definitely unique. Once past a brief menu to get into the game’s Career Mode players won’t ever see a menu again, progressing from race-to-race not by clicking and pointing but rather via in-game functions: pull up behind an opponent on the free-roaming streets, flash the high beams and race. The complex city layouts are fantastic as well, though the inherent frustrations of having to learn every race are evident (no course is raced more than once); the "Retry" function becomes entirely too familiar just figuring out a viable path through the checkpoints and to the finish. The supplied variety is enough to placate most aggravation though, especially when learning a shortcut for one race can be valuable knowledge in another.

When things go right, Midnight Club II is good. Real good. Hot cars blast through intersections, dodge between buildings through narrow alleys, launch off ramps, and smash through windows to keep beat with the rest of the pack. It’s amazing then that playing the game for hours yields only about one half second of a good time.

If there is just one thing within the broad depths of human conception that does not belong in a video game it is randomness, a seed of unpredictability that deteriorates gameplay such that any learned skill and technique is nullified by luck. Indiscriminate chance events are what keep the amount of enjoyment felt playing Midnight Club II impossibly minimal. Instead of enticing players to conquer the challenge the game rather spits in their face, thwarting any brilliant execution on the player’s part with the reward of unpredictability.

Quite sincerely, if the PS2 had the capability of projecting spit in a player’s face Midnight Club II would take advantage of the feature. It’s enough that while learning a new race rival racers spout baseless insults: the hard-core Latina cries with all her malice, "Idiota!" and Moses, in an attempt to cause brain-pain, says "yo" at least twenty times every chance he gets to speak. But when the game constantly throws randomly generated traffic patterns at the player, any amount of enjoyment goes straight down the loo. Intersections are at times completely impassable, blocked by buses, taxis, big rigs, etc. Down long stretches traffic ahead haphazardly swerves with ill intent. Not to mention the careening antics of competing racers who all too willingly inflict chaos ahead, causing wrecks and multi-vehicle pileups to happily stall racing and all related enjoyment.

Quite frankly, I am disappointed with how Rockstar direction when it comes to game design. It wouldn't have taken much to save this game and the best advice I can offer to Rockstar is to refrain from creating bad games. It takes a lot more than simply combining cool ideas to make a game that’s enjoyable through-and-through. Until Rockstar learns this, the industry can look forward to the continued plague of more worthless controversy in the form of their unenjoyable games.

· · · MarkRyan