Earlier this week I reviewed the box of Killzone 2, praising the vivid, excellent art design and raining the hate down on the black and white manual. It received such a rapturous reception that I figured I’d give it another shot, this time with Rockstar’s super-sunny street racer Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

Trust me when I say this one is even better; this one is a rental copy!

As you can see from the fine stylings of the plastic wallet some serious thought has been given to this slipcase. It’s economical in it’s space but efficient, just enough for the MC:LA disc to fit snugly inside.

Obviously, appearance has not been a top priority for this copy of Midnight Club, but this is no bad thing because the game’ packaging is extremely informative. The inner sleeve behind the disc, while not as impressive as Killzone’s Communist-style propaganda poster, is still useful enough to remind us to “return the correct DVD in this wallet.” And how!

The back of the, um, case, is also chock full of useful tidbits of info! Top points to note are:

• DVDs are pretty tough but they may need a bit of love and attention, especially if they’ve been mishandled
• Hold the DVD by the edges
• Sit back, relax, and enjoy quality viewing
• The wallet is lined with Tyvek®, a material to better protect your disc…not a lot of people know that!

So all in all, it’s a pretty interesting, fact-filled case with a touch of the minimalist when it comes to its unconventional design. Some would call it crazy, some would say it’s brave, but it makes perfect sense in the end because it works so brilliantly at what it does, and what it does, it does well.

What about this all-important disc the slipcase has already educated us about? Well, it’s pretty much a Midnight Club: LA logo, some palm trees (since it is Los Angeles) and something in the middle that is obscured by the huge sticker planted on the disc by the rental firm. This somewhat dilutes the enjoyable experience of admiring a game disc as it took about 10 minutes of squinting to realise that I was looking at a motorcycle.

Overall impressions then, of my rental copy’s box art? It’s minimalist, informative, quietly self-assuming and stylish yet at the same time perhaps just a little too extreme when compared to other, more conventional game cases.

I give it a 2.73 on the SG Box Art Review Scale, just because I can.

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