If I ever met the staff behind Rockstar Games, I would want to reach out, shake their hands, and thank them. You see, they seem to be the only company of late that feels the PC is still a viable platform for releasing games. The fact that their PC games are of better quality than their console counterparts and yet are less expensive than the console games are just a reminder of how good us PC gamers have it.
If you took a look at George's original review, not much has changed in the transition from the PlayStation 2 version as far as gameplay goes. You can of course use a steering wheel for this game or a standard gamepad. In addition a mouse / keyboard combo is also supported. Because I was lazy I stuck with my USB force feedback gamepad and as long as you have an analog gamepad, you are good to go. Steering with a digital gamepad is difficult.
Graphics are much , much improved from the original PS2 version and are a little better than the Xbox. You can jack up the resolution of the game which is always a good thing, but that comes at the expense of frame rate, which unless you have a 2.0+ Ghz PC or better, you'll probably stay at the lower end of the resolution scale. The only gripe I have is the darkness of the game. While the 'dark' motif kinda goes with the overall theme of the game, it's almost too dark – I often find myself looking to adjust the gamma.
As far as gameplay goes, it's pretty much your standard checkpoint racing but with bad guys. It's funny when you play a game like this compared to Midtown Madness 3 and you can really enjoy MC2 over MM3. Ironically, the company that developed the original Midtown Madness made Midnight Club 2, and it's my opinion that MC2 is much better on any platform.
As a port, the menu interface does suffer as you'll be using the keyboard quite a bit to arrow through options that should have been selected with a mouse. Trying to find the option to customize buttons on my controller took a little longer than it should have. (Of course, on a PC, there are so many different controllers that you can use vs a console that some added levels of option menus are a given, it still seems like it should have been better streamlined).
The game soundtrack is still very good, but the issues of the original PS2 version still remain. Voice acting could have been better (remember this is the same company that brought us GTA: Vice City), but it's a minor squabble.
Online play is also available with the PC game, although there is no in-game voice chat (Roger Wilco works fine though). Online play was smooth, although I didn't find a lot of people online throughout a weekend, which seemed odd.
Midnight Club 2 is a great arcade racer for the PC and if you're interested you can also check out the demo. It's a tossup to buy the PC or Xbox version of the game, however I would say that if your primary concern is cost and graphics, get the PC version. If you prefer hassle-free online voice chatting, get the Xbox version. The PS2 version is also good, but Xbox and PC are a lot better in my opinion – either way you can't go wrong. I highly recommend Midnight Club 2 for the PC.
-Dan
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