BEST RACING GAME ON PSP others recommending dub edition but this is another level.

Ik this game is almost 17 years old at this point and I doubt anyone is gonna care about this review but I just wanna see if it holds up today. This game feels both more of a successor and a step down from the psp port of midnight club 3. There’s a faithful story from the ps3 version of LA aswell as an exclusive one tied to the new city of Tokyo where the official real world racers midnight club actually invite you to join after becoming the LA champion. It’s one of its biggest advantages compared to both versions of midnight club 3 as the world feels more lively with all these characters you interact with on a positive or negative basis. Racers will either complement you such as Latica, Annie or Karl or they will loath or trash talk you like Andrew or Brooks similar to the characters from midnight 2 but rather less corny asf. Despite not having any “clubs”, LA remix introduces other activities such as series, Hollywood time trials, a payback mafia-ish mode where you take down racers who fail to pay back loans or have a bad rep and finally a car delivery mode where you get a taste of driving super cars or class A cars early in the game. All these events made the cites feel more interactive compared to the bare bones cities of 3. However as I mentioned this game does feel like a stepdown from 3 mainly due to-the difficulty and car handling as well as progression. While 3 felt more challenging, the rewards were worth the time and progression felt lenient. This feels the opposite in LA remix as most races were easy(due to repetitive layouts) while others felt broken due to the constant AI traffic being abysmal and spawning in directly in front of the driver. This being it’s all time worse when you're forced to get a bike for Andrew’s races as the bike handling is arguably worse in LA remix than in 3 but there’s barely any bike races so that’s good. Unfortunately the final race between Brook is probably the most underwhelming race of the whole franchise. Compared to his ps3 port counterpart, he’s extremely slow and drives a luxury class A benz that can’t even keep up with you as at that point in the game you’ve most likely have gotten the Shelby concept or a good class A exotic super car, meaning you can beat him easily by a full whole minute. Compare this to three which had high octane super cars destroying the streets of the starter level of San Diego which felt like a proper conclusion. What the final race should’ve been is Brook using an R8 with the colour scheme and maybe even parts similar to his class A Benz, signifying his personality and how he shouldn’t be reckoned with due to his obsession with materialistic wealth while rudely humbling others . The reward ends up being his car along with the base audi R8. The Tokyo final race against Yamagata suffers from the same problem despite driving a Lamborghini and his ai being very stupid. In addition while onto the Tokyo campaign, it does feel abit rushed too with the story and lore being the highlight with everyone else in backdrop. The extra events like payback or delivery are nowhere to be seen, subsequently replaced by the midnight club tournaments and races. This ends up making the world of Tokyo feel redundant with nothing to do besides racing the midnight club group. It would’ve been interesting if maybe pinkslips or maybe exclusive Tokyo events like drifting were implemented. Overall this game is good and a hidden gem amongst rockstars many forgotten titles over the years. Hopefully this franchise can still make a comeback after GTA 6 is dropped

Fast and varied sandbox-style racing game from Rockstar. Decent graphics, good music and loads of challenges although the streets are so packed with traffic it can get a little frustrating when you plough into yet another oncoming car while trying to navigate. A good effort overall though.