Kombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game's About
Midnight Club: LA Remix is the portable version of the console's latest Midnight Club effort. You are a new guy in the big West Coast city looking to make a name for yourself. After all, racing others and earning money and respect is the way to climb to the top of the illegal street racing circuit.

What's Hot
Take a huge city like Los Angeles and shrink it to fit in your pocket. That is essentially what Rockstar has done with LA Remix. It takes all the best parts of the console version and successfully brings them to life on the PSP. You start out by picking your first car and taking on a bunch of lowly street racers. Winning money and gaining rep allows you to go on a shopping spree to tune your car to the right specifications.

The cars look great. If you just bought a shiny new PSP-3000, the colors will pop out and LA will be more vibrant than on the past versions of the PSP hardware. Add that with all the paint options, parts and decals and you'll begin to see how many things happen on the screen at once. Just be careful with a new paint job because cars will show a little bit of real-time damage. The city itself looks great. Some concessions had to be made for the PSP and shrink it down from the console but the size of the city isn't anything to scoff at. Plenty of famous landmarks and world class streets are still there to tear up. Driving around for the next race is easy thanks to the GPS and the mini-map that are easily accessible at any moment.

For the first time, I can't think of any gripes I have with the PSP controls. It is easy to pass the blame on the less than perfect button layout of the hardware, but Rockstar overcame those challenges and made LA Remix one smooth ride. Power sliding through the LA streets has never been easier with some of the best handling I have experienced for a handheld game. The cars have a good amount of weight versus steerability to find the right blend of realism and video game.

What's Not
With all the things LA Remix processes at the same time, a lot of loading has to occur. Want to start a race? Loading… Go to garage? Loading… Back to the streets to search for an opponent? Loading… Next race in a series? Loading… You get the picture. A game like LA Remix that is designed to be fast doesn't benefit when you have to load frequently and grinds the gameplay to a halt. Even if it lasts for a few seconds, you'll stare at the orange loading screen, eager to hit the gas.

The city it big, but the mini-map is not. It's not the roads that are the problem but the shortcuts and sidewalks. Those places are important if you want to eek out a victory at the last second. Not having any heads-up can really mess you up if you drive into a wall while you are squinting to see where you need to turn next off the beaten road. In most races you won't need to worry about it, but when things get down to the wire, any corners you can shave will be precious seconds you can gain on your rivals.

Final Word
LA Remix is a luxury racing game. A lot of that comes from the excellent controls and the toned down difficulty. Not much had to be diluted from the console version and it makes the PSP version look that much better. The city might be smaller, but the rest of the game has just as large of a heart.