Los Angeles is huge. We can still remember the first time we flew into the place at night, just marvelling at the city lights below stretching to the visible horizon in every direction. And Rockstar has modelled the centre of the City of Angels in the latest Midnight Club, from the high class Beverly Hills shops to Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard.

For those new to the series, Midnight Club is all about illegal street racing. Your car can be kitted out with engine upgrades, fancy exhausts, nitrous oxide canisters, spoilers, side-skirts, neon lights and all manner of boy racer goodies.

The idea of the game is to "trick" out your "ride" (see, we know all the lingo) and then drive down the car park near the chip shop and sit there all night impressing the "ladies". All right, the real idea is to race and win money to upgrade your car, or buy brand new motors, from the lowly Golf GTI to the likes of the Lamborghini Gallardo. There are a few bikes available, too, for two-wheeled traffic terrorists.

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The game plays out in an open-ended world: it's essentially Grand Race Auto, and it looks like GTA too; unsurprisingly as it's built with the same engine. The streets of LA are gorgeously realised with a full day/night cycle, and you cruise around the highly detailed city, flashing your headlights at potential opponents to challenge them to a race.

Then it's off to the start-line to partake in various different styles of racing. There are standard checkpoint races through the city, time trials and red light races. The latter aren't runs through the seedy areas of town, rather they begin at the nearest traffic light and finish at a specific landmark. Drivers are allowed to take any route so knowledge of the streets and shortcuts is paramount.

Midnight Club also offers tournaments and missions, including delivery tasks, destruction (running another vehicle off the road) and even so called pink slip races where the participants' cars are bet against each other. In short, there's plenty to do, and every race boosts your reputation and further unlocks incremental upgrades and new vehicles. Gunning for that Aston Martin Vantage becomes a compelling experience.

The driving model itself is unashamedly arcade in nature. It's about speed, speed and a bit more speed, with the shops, post boxes and pedestrians lashing by in a blurry haze; especially when you hit the nitro. The vehicle's turbo-meter can be filled up by slipstreaming an opponent for a short while, giving a lagging player the chance to fly up through the field.

However, hitting the old nitrous oxide is a bit of a gamble in anything approaching traffic, as a head-on collision most definitely won't leave you laughing. It's tricky to dodge onrushing cars at nitro speeds and your field of vision blurs to make things harder still. We weren't mad keen on this effect to be honest, as it adds more difficulty to the situation in a slightly irritating way. Although it certainly makes you think before you boost, and that was obviously the intention.

The traffic is actually a bigger danger than the corners, in general, as you can pretty much throw yourself into the bends and scrape around them without losing too much speed. But don't think Midnight Club is easy, oh no. Not by a long shot. The AI drivers are quick through the intersections, know the shortcuts and will punish you for the slightest slowdown.

Holding the lead is certainly challenging, more so when you're new to the game and don't know your way around the city very well. Sure, the checkpoints contain floating arrows that indicate the direction of the following one, but you find yourself constantly flicking your eyes towards the minimap radar to check exactly where you're heading. And if in the split-second your eyes are off the road you happen to clip a car and spin out... The cry of "Arrrgggghhh!" becomes quite a familiar one.

Occasional outbursts aside, we thoroughly relished race time in Los Angeles. Whipping between buses in the centre of the city, driving on two wheels in stunt style, dashing away from the cops when we'd shattered the speed limit (and marvelling at the authentic radio chatter picked up on our police scanner: "All units advised... Suspect is heading onto the freeway..."). It's hugely entertaining on many levels.

As well as the single player, there's an impressive selection of Xbox Live modes to get stuck into, with a variation of races and capture the flag style games. With all this on offer, Midnight Club can't be accused of stinting on content.

Rockstar has unleashed vehicle tuning heaven in a Grand Theft Auto style racing world. Midnight Club is very much an arcade style racer, but while the physics are pretty forgiving, the computer controlled drivers aren't. The game is very challenging and consistently winning is a tough task, and be warned: this does bubble over into frustration at times.