Midway scored pretty big in the arcades in the late 90s with the Rush series. There have been three titles in the series, each with progressively better stunts, graphics, and more intense arcade racing action. The console ports were well-made too, and now Midway will be bringing two of the three games back with their recently-announced Midway Arcade Treasures 3.
But the retro-friendly guys at Midway also want to further the series. To this end, they're well into the production over at their San Diego studio on L.A. Rush, an arcade racer for the Xbox and PS2 that combines a free-roaming city in the style of Grand Theft Auto or True Crime with the many shortcuts, jumps, stunts, and fast-paced racing you might expect from the Rush games.
Midway is promising to not leave the roots of the series, despite the hugely opened-up possibilities of an open city to drive around in. Sure, you can now take all 36 fully licensed cars (with full damage modeling), upgrade them with real world parts, and unlock new concept vehicles. You can even take out a couple of upgraded versions of cars seen in past Rush games. Racing isn't the only thing you'll do - there are missions which further a fully fleshed out story that's more like GTA than, say, Midnight Club 2. Racing is still at the core of this game, though, as Midway intends to make around 70% of the gameplay racing. Many of them will require you to get from the start to the finishing line in a more free fashion where you have no checkpoints in between.
This is where the game's great new GPS system comes in. Sure, you'll get the chance to look at a map of the game's 350 miles of driveable road, and choose a destination that's pointed on the minimap at the bottom of the screen. But the game also can put an arrow at the top of the screen, pointing you to the shortest path to get there. The best part is that L.A. Rush will recalculate and change the arrow's direction to point to the next best route if you miss a turn or get knocked off course.
While Midway is calling L.A. Rush a street racing game, it's very different from Need for Speed: Underground. In those games, you're stuck on a set track, and the setting is very similar from one race to the next - it's always at night, and the cars are mostly imports and some intangible amount of "respect" is measured over the course of the game. L.A. Rush is going against that kind of racing with many American model cars, more freedom to go where you want, racing at all times of the day and night, and plenty of car upgrades that can both change the looks of your car as well as truly tune its performance as well. They've licensed many different parts manufacturers for this aspect of the game, including B.F. Goodrich, Yokohama, Pirelli, and more.
What we were shown at Midway's event was a video of in-game PS2 footage, and I have to say that I thought it surely had to be the Xbox version until some specifically told us otherwise. The draw distance was huge, showing skyscrapers that must have been at least two miles away. The amount of detail nearby was excellent too, with plenty of traffic on the highways and lots of little touches.
Midway gave us a specific example to show off the game's detail. Both True Crime and GTA: San Andreas have their own versions of the Santa Monica pier, and we were shown footage of both. Next, we got to see the L.A. Rush version of the same thing; it looked far better and more realistic, and had much more in the way of breakable objects as well. You could crash through benches and barriers, but the best part was hitting one of the cars on a Ferris wheel and bringing the whole thing crashing down.
And this brings us to what Midway hopes will be one of the best parts of L.A. Rush: crashing through things and breaking stuff all along the way. Another example we saw was the ability to smash right through the Hollywood sign, and watching one of the letters shatter into pieces while the car flies through the air and back onto the highway below. It's one of those things that isn't exactly realistic, but the fun outweighs the outlandish style by far.
Midway still hasn't given up many details on how the story will work, or what kind of voice acting we'll get. They promised considerable Hollywood talent for the game, and said that more information will be available in the next few months. We're told that a two player split-screen mode is intended, although I heard no mention of online play. I think it'd be great fun to have something like this, but few games with a fully open city allow any sort of multiplayer. It remains to be seen what kind of compromises might be necessary to make online play a reality.
I admit I was very skeptical to find that L.A. Rush is borrowing so many things from non-racing games, but they seem to be committed to keeping the game to its original arcade roots. If they can manage to maintain this through launch day, they could be looking at a huge hit with this game.
