This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content.

A rock-solid game design paradigm these days is as follows: take the popular elements of two-to-three best-selling games and squeeze them into one game in half the time at a quarter of the cost. Today's subject is L.A. Rush from Midway, and its victims are the Midnight Club, Grand Theft Auto, and Burnout franchises, as well as (I suppose) True Crime: Streets of LA. There were no survivors.

L.A. Rush tells the archetypal tale of the underground street racing champ who has all of his cars stolen by a zoot-suit wearing opponent. As is the logical thing to do after having all of your cars stolen, our young hero by the name of Trikz decides to re-enter the underground racing circuit with nothing but his beat up old jalopy and steal back his cars. Obviously, when your cars are stolen away you wouldn't want to involve the police, because... down with the man?

Anyway, LA Rush is a pretty straightforward street racing game that takes place in a free-roaming and full-fledged Los Angeles, California. The meat of the game takes place in straightforward races in an underground circuit where you'll try to rank up to compete with the pro's for big bucks, but there are a few more modes to keep things semi-interesting. As you progress, your friends will clue you in on the locations of some of your stolen cars that you'll need to go steal back. The second you get in the new car, however, some thugs (about 500) of the bad guy will come careening at you in blue SUVs. For some reason or another, they'll try like the dickens to destroy your car before you can get it home.

Overall, the graphics of the game are pretty good. All of LA is under your reign, and it looks better than any other full-city games we've seen in history.

The soundtrack is sort of interesting in that you can choose your flavor. From the menu, you can choose between rock, hip hop, and techno music to serenade your driving adventure. Much of the voiceacting (the acting done by voiceactors and not ridiculous celebrity cameos and the ridiculous announcer) is pretty good, save the choppy dialog peppered with more "yo" than a Duncan factory (get it?)

"It's like GTA where you stay in your car," "it's like Burnout with a story mode!" Lies, all of them. L.A. Rush wants to be a lot, tries to be too much, and ends up as too little. Every game it attempts to emulate only ends up as an annoying element of a broken racing game. The "realistic" Los Angeles is too plain; the only difference between any two given areas in the city is the buildings you're driving by or crashing into. They try to trick you into thinking the city is interactive because there are three or four windows and walls that you can crash through, but then the other 9,000 windows and walls are made of magical car-kryptonite that follow your "watch me plow through this two-foot tall cement wall to pull in first place" with "wow, look how pretty my car looks as it flies through the air and crumbles into pieces."

And there's problem number two: the crashes. Trying shamelessly to emulate Burnout's beautiful car wrecks, L.A. Rush slows down time and over-blooms the background so you can watch your car falling apart when you're in a car wreck. The first time you see this, you might be impressed. The second, third, fourth, and nineteen millionth time you see it you'll just throw your controller at a wall and wonder when you'll actually be able to control the game again. Simply put, there is way too much traffic, and the lovely crash sequence is initiated every time you hit one of the many, many cars littering the streets. There's no way to skip the crash sequence, and even holding a trigger button which "fast forwards" only puts you at about 1/4 the speed of time, so for about eight seconds you're ripped from the game and given no control whatsoever over the race. Even after this sequence, it takes too long for you to get back into the race because they place you in weird positions and at a dead halt. The crashes in the Burnout series are so much fun because you can still control your car during them so you can have an impact on gameplay (you aren't totally removed from the game like in L.A. Rush) and because after the pretty crash sequence you're thrown right back into the race going at full speed. Those two elements are what keep the crashes in the Burnout games from being tedious, and they're the two elements Midway left out. Slow motion and over-bloomed backgrounds do not a Burnout game make.

As for the GTA-like storyline, forget it. The storyline here is tragically inane and painfully stereotypical. It's not enough that all the white guys have to act like black guys, but all the black guys have to act like white guys acting like black guys. A game written and directed by basement-dwelling game programmers that tries to appeal to the urban whiteboy poser market is never a good idea.

For all the advertisements in this game, it feels like they should be paying me to play it. Every billboard in the virtual LA is for Axe Body Spray (gamers are smelly) or Rides Magazine (gamers like to read cars being referred to as "whips"). And the name "West Coast Customs" is dropped more often in a given 30 minutes than in a whole season of MTV's "Pimp My Ride"; the tips displayed on the loading screens -- which in most games would be something to the tune of "Hold X to perform a drift while turning" -- is quite often "Stop by West Coast Customs to get your ride tuned up for a low price" or "Head to West Coast Customs to upgrade your wheels" or "West Coast Customs is the ONLY car modification service on planet Earth, go there NOW." Even the mechanics from WCC, the ones who on "Pimp My Ride" always sound like they're reading lines -- because they are -- show up in the game (voiced and rendered) to further pursue the illusion that they're celebrities.

Things like this could always be overlooked, of course, if the game was fun. It isn't, so it won't be. The racing itself is painfully dull. Computer-controlled racing opponents are all on rubber bands and show no AI whatsoever. It seems like they're programmed to take it easy on you, since they always seem willing to let you pass them but once you're in first place they turn into four-wheeled torpedoes. One could take advantage of that gameplay "element" and hang back in third or fourth place for all of the race and pull into first at the finish like, and in my case, one did. You can beat the whole game like this in three or four hours, especially if you don't mind that you can ride the whole game through in second or third place without any harsh recourse.

The developers of this game must be trying to harbor some distain for "the man" among young gamers, since for some reason there are always dozens of cops within honking range of your car at all times. Your little GTA-ripoff corner map shows the position of police cars on the map as blue dots, and most times the map is swarming with them. There's even a GTA-ripoff "wanted" indicator made up of four stars at the top of your screen (right above the GTA-ripoff money indicator) that light up as cops take more of a liking to you. This system is completely broken, because all the cops will do is chase you until you stop -- at which point they'll fine you around $100 and leave you alone. You're released right where you were, even if you were chugging at five stars.

It doesn't even make sense why the police will start chasing you. It isn't like you can steal cars (can't get out of your car) or run over old ladies (pedestrians are just background art), so one cop will start chasing you if you drive by him too quickly and, since it's impossible to lose the swarm of police that attach themselves to you within seconds, you either need to run away until you make a mistake and get pinned down, or until you realize that it saves a lot of time to just stop and pay the fine. This only really matters, though, when you're in free-roaming mode, and the only thing you do in free-roaming mode is go from race to race or mission to mission. The realistic LA becomes simply an overcomplicated menu screen to get to where you need to go; there's no point to roaming through the city, there's no tokens to collect, nicer cars to steal, convenience stores to rob, or prostitutes to employ.

There was a time when these mediocre knockoff games were standard fare, released by no-name companies that had the decency of putting how awful they were right on the cover. Now, even the largest of companies will stake their reputation and half of their back account on a game that puts how much it wants to be another famous game right on the cover. Trying to cash in on the respect of the [City] Rush franchise, Midway has constructed here a champion of mediocrity and poor taste. From the unbelievably dense traffic with the inescapable crash sequences, to the poser-fest plot and the explosion of brand placement, this game is a definite multiple-offender. Don't buy this game looking for a GTA experience oreven a good racing game; buy it because you love white guys with cornrows who are named Trikz.

Rubber-band racing is one thing, but when every "feature" is annoying -- bad news.

The cutscenes and city model are pretty good-looking, everything else is pretty bland.

While the music is all pretty vanilla, at least you can choose your flavor of vanilla.

like to rip your controller in half from frustration, fun ahoy!

No online races and no reason to play this game more than once, if at all.