Midnight Club: Los Angeles - South Central DLC
Come and find me in tha Club
The Fast and the Furious has a lot to answer for. It caused Need for Speed to head underground and inspired a whole sub-genre of racing games devoted to pimping out rides ready for a spot of unlawful street racing. It also inadvertently gave rise to Rockstar's Midnight Club series, which has enjoyed some deserved attention as an unadulterated arcade racing experience with all of the tricked out trimmings you could ever want. Midnight Club 3 introduced licensed vehicles and most recently Midnight Club: Los Angeles took the series to a new level, utilising the incredible Rage engine that powered its big sandbox brother, Grand Theft... something.
Inevitably, the game looks amazing and plays rather well too, scoring a highly respectable 82% back in October. So, we're quite excited to see that Rockstar have been busy beavering away on some pretty substantial DLC for the game that will expand the city limits to incorporate an entirely new area for us to explore. The clue is actually in the title - the notorious South Central region of LA is yours to tear up in typical street racer style, sporting huge spoilers, even bigger exhausts and a whole load of garish neon lights should you so fancy.
While the announcement of DLC for Midnight Club: LA may have been eclipsed by another slightly higher profile downloadable episode for GTA IV, there's still plenty in the South Central pack that should pique your interest. Most significantly, South Central expands the overall map - which was pretty expansive to begin with - introducing an area around a third of the size of the original layout. South Central continues in the same vein with locales loosely based upon their real-world counterparts while providing an alternative take on the genuine article. So, where in reality, South Central LA is a run-down ghetto, Midnight Club's take is slightly less so, instead opting for a cleaner version with less of the urban grime and felonious activities save for your own illicit street racing.
As a result of all this added real estate, there are loads of new events to complete using the add-on's nine new vehicles. We went along to Rockstar to get some hands-on time with the game and got to try out a lurid green drop-top Chevy that slid around like Torville and Dean after a massive drunken bender. It's straight out of Boyz N the Hood, riding like Doughboy's pimped car, complete with bouncing suspension. Taking time to get to grips with the rules of the road, we encounter the fuzz a few times and get ourselves arrested on each occasion. Soon we're ready to attempt a race, still in our green nightmare and we inevitably lose spectacularly missing a turn after several nasty head-on crashes. We're not off to a good start.
A few races later and we're trying out a tasty fully customised Range Rover that feels nice and sturdy on the roads, especially after the twitchy handling of the Chevy convertible. Just when we're starting to feel confident however, we somehow manage to roll the 4x4 behemoth, flipping it onto its roof. We're beginning to think that maybe we're not very good at this. Our next race after a shaky start turns into a comfortable victory after using a few shortcuts that are helpfully marked on your radar as light grey lines. Rushing through an abandoned train yard at an eye-watering speed we also hit some ramps to gain some incredible air, shooting over the top of one of our rivals in the process. South Central apparently provides just as many outlandish arcade thrills as the full game.
Finally, we get to break out a proper racing car in the form of the Mercedes CLK63 AMG and boy, do we feel the difference. It's nippy, agile and great fun to drive. Using the technique for boosting past rival racers by using their slipstream, we manage to find our way to a few hard earned victories and even manage to outrun the cops on one occasion. From our sample of just three of the nine new vehicles, we can already see that there's a fair bit of variety in the South Central content. On sale March 12th from the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace for around 6.99 GBP and 800 MS points respectively, you get 12 new battle maps, 26 new races, 10 new delivery missions and over 100 new red light races for your money. There are also new music tracks, new decals and new rims as well as full body kits for each of the new vehicles. That's a lot of newness. The area expansion itself is free, adding four new neighbourhoods including Crenshaw and Compton, but if you want to get all of the missions and vehicles, you'll want to pick up the premium download.
As the second of Rockstar's recent major downloadable expansions, the South Central pack is further indication of the company's commitment to extending the shelf life of their games. This and The Lost and Damned could only be the tip of the iceberg in Rockstar's ongoing plans for DLC. Either way, it's nice to see great support for such excellent titles. There'll be a full review on its way soon.
Comments
Awesome! Can't wait for this to come out THURSDAY! Now is the time to get this game!
been lookin cant find it yet doin me head in yet agen
I want to play Grand Auto Theif iv For free
midnight club is a lot better then gta with the new stuff with mindnight club it will be a hell of a lot better but still cant find the pack for it. in the next one i think they should make a ford escort mk 4 rs turbo and a serria cozzy that would prob be good in a game
Guys. The release date for this has slipped by a week. It's now due March 19th.
hi richie i hope u find the problem and sort it out. i hope 2 see a other midnight club soon where would the next place be u have made most of them in america can we have it in a different place next time please would be great 2 see a different place on the cover then america all the time hope 2 hear from u soon cheers
that the hot shiit
man
cant wait only 2 days left. hope they have done it all we are waitin for now is 2 hear from a member of staff 2 get hold of us and let us all know how they have got on!!!
YO THEY NEED TO MAKE THE GAME SO THAT YOU CAN CUSTOMIZE THE CAR AUDIO ...I WANNA BE ABLE TO PUT 2 FIFTEENS IN MY CAR ....AND TAKE IT TO SOUND COMPETITIONS
THEY NEED TO PUT CAR AUDIO IN THE GAME ......I HOPE SOMEBODY ANSWERS ME BACK ON THIS
i have payed for the game but its not lettin me download it can any1 one help !!!!1
I still can't find it
I'v downloaded the free map expansion, but the overall area still looks the same. Does ne1 know why?
hey i downloaded south central today, i was doing the new delivery missions and 2 of the 5 cars i delivered were vehicles i could not buy from the garage, one being a Audi another the Mitsubishi evo X. At first i though it was just a new body kit for the evo 9 but it wasn’t.
The south central download contains a number of other cars that are un-released, I assume they will make us pay more in the future for access to these vehicles even though there already stored on the playstations hard drive.
how do i get the download content for south central on my ps3 to work i have the races in goal attack and arcade i have the cars but no races in career mode please help
Your not alone mate
how do u get the new bike
By now you'll have all read about the issues with the 360 version of this DLC, which have since been resolved. It's been out for a week or so on PSN now though. I should clarify Sticky that I'm not involved with the game, I just write about his stuff. As soon as Rockstar announce the sequel, you guys will be the first to know. It'll be a good while before we can expect that though. Keep checking back for updates, guys!
Hey Guys, how do you access the new events? The cars are available to me but no extra events
Damo, did you download the DLC Free/Premium and then download the patch for the game, i'm having the same problem as you, new cars but no new events. I'm wondering if it was becasuse i downloaded the DLC before the patch.
In Hate this game so much . If I ever get this game, I will take a sledgehammer and put the game in the case and beat it as hard as I can and My cousin Nathinel will help me out and I will laugh as Hard As I Can like HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YEA HOW DO U LIKE THEM APPLES
yeah i like the content they put out for midnightclub but what up with these guys on live having these other ars like the CTS and the new bike and the evo plus the CL65 i hate that why the gonna put something out and then take it away then u cant get them cars i seen people with them cars and i think it's not fare for the other people to not have them its just not right they need to fix that i want to drive a evo or have the CTS some body tell me whats goin on?????
mid night club i s ace,the graphics and the car handling is brilliant,rockstar releses dlc you actualy want to buy i mean who really wants to buy costumes and wepons........nah.........we want more game please!!
this is the number one game for me in a America
also its cooooool
how do you use cars you downloaded in online play in midnight club LA? i just downloaded a bunch and i can use then
Is it possible to play on the computer midnight club LA South Central
can someone please help i just downloaded the premium south central today but the map looks the same and i have not recived any of the new cars PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP !!!!!!!!!!!
somone help me i went on my MCLA game went to downloadable content and nothing showed up then i went on the ps store and cant find. someone tell me what to do!!!!!!!!
i liked it alot cause it was fun.
does south central unlock hydrolics and airbags for u. Also i heard about something called lowrider mode what exactly is that