You know, if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, then you've probably sneaked down to the fridge at the witching hour for a spot of illicit Club action. We like the Orange flavour best, since you ask. However, Midnight Club II is all about an equally exciting, yet far more dangerous, midnight club.

Starting off in LA. in a fairly underpowered car, you challenge local hoodlums to a race by flashing your headlights at them. Just like in Maidstone. Sadly though, Kent's county town has been dropped in favour of Paris and Tokyo.

Race found, you hoon about in your car through the courses which, as with Midtown Madness 3, are set in appealingly non-linear surroundings. You get a Grand Theft Auto-style map at the bottom of your screen, which allows you to decide upon the best route to the next checkpoint - because the city's open, the route is up to you. Smashing through glass doors to access shortcuts, hurtling down narrow alleyways, or 'accidentally' sending pedestrians flying over your bonnet, it's all fair game.

As the game progresses, you win the cars of your beaten opponents. Even better, further into the game you get to win motorbikes, which are faster and more manoeuvrable. The trade off is that you're far more likely to end up as a nasty puddle of person paste if you hit something.

The freeform nature of the game means that Midnight Club II can be a great laugh to play. If you've spent time with GTA and think that messing about in the cars is a laugh, then the prospect of (slightly) more structured racing round similarly labyrinthine cities should be a tasty one. Except now the cities are high-res, and the framerate's silkier than Heidi Klum's inner thigh. We imagine that's quite smooth, at any rate.

There are some tasty additions to the mix that make things a bit more involving. The Left trigger acts as a stunt button that allows you to pull off some properly nifty moves, depending on your choice of vehicle. If you're in a car, you might be able to swiftly go onto two wheels, allowing you to scream through the narrowest of spaces at full pelt. If you're on a motorbike, you'll be able to pull off slinky turns at a faster pace, or wheelie for a burst of speed. Certain cars have nitro boosts as well, allowing you to make ludicrously big, shortcut-granting jumps.

It's all a lot of fun, basically.

Unfortunately, there a few things that threaten to make you go to bed before midnight. For one, the handling isn't quite right. It's very arcadey, and we've no problem with that, but it's overly digital. You feel like you've got a choice between no steering or full lock, with no analogue increments in between. That's not just a shame, given the lovely sticks on the Xbox pad, it makes the game less fun than it should be.

It's annoying to crash when you're in the lead, just because twitchy handling has sent you into the motorway wall rather than a few feet to the left.

If the handling harks back to games gone by, so too does the method of progression. You have to win a race before you can move on, and although there's nothing unusual about that - Burnout 2: Point Of Impact gets away with it, no worries - in Midnight Club II it can properly piss you off. Perhaps it's because of the style of racing: on some levels there's no set order to the check points, so it takes trial and error to work out the 3 best route to zip round and make it to the finish first. Fun for the first five or six goes, granted, but obnoxiously frustrating by the 13th. Yep, Midnight Club II is harder than not getting hooked on Big Brother. At first you'll sail through the levels, but it gets frustratingly tough once you're into it. Even so, there's a great deal of fun to be had - pedal to the metal, pedestrian-killing thrills and a slick feel means this has the edge over Midtown Madness 3, at least in the offline stakes. Thing is, if it's just an urban thrill ride you're after, don't buy this unless you've already thrashed Burnout 2 - it's a far classier experience.

But then Burnout 2 doesn't offer Xbox Live play. And the prospect of taking part in eight-player Midnight Club races is a tempting one, especially since you'll have some players on bikes, some in cars, and a generally high level of mentalness.

We'll have an update on the Live play next issue, but if offline is where you're at, then Midnight Club II still offers an involving, enjoyable take on the whole driving thang.

1. Fun arcade racing
2. Finding jumps and shortcuts is great!
3. Xbox Live promises to rock

1. Frustratingly tough on occasion

Power
Not a lot of detail going on, but a high resolution and slick framerate make up for it.

Style
The visual style is straightforward, but the way rivals are presented adds a bit of flair to the game.

Immersion
The openness of the cities encourages exploration and mad driving, so you get right into it...

Lifespan
...but the frustration factor does set in with the single-player mode. Live play should be great, though.

Summary
An adrenaline fuelled racer that does a lot of things right - but not as many as Bumout 2. Live play should be a big redeemer.