The Features

Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition (MC3) from Rockstar Games is here!  I know what you may be thinking; this is just another tuner-centric racing game full of police chases, drag strips, and city-street courses.  While there have been many racing games released that would easily fit this description MC3 isn’t one of them.  This isn’t just another game – it’s a better game.

• Open City Racing: Maps of Atlanta, San Diego, and Detroit
• Vehicles: Over 50 licensed SUVs, import tuners, muscle cars, choppers and luxury rides that can be driven and highly customized.
• Online Gameplay: 8-player online competition
• Vehicle Customizations: upgrades the body kits, air intakes, suspension, transmission,  multi-layered body color, vinyls, chop-tops, and more.

Gameplay

In racing games where you race is as important as what you race.  Rather than creating a fictional city to explore, much like Need For Speed Underground (NFSU) and Street Syndicate Racing (SRS) has, Rockstar gives us the visually-stunning cities of Atlanta, Detroit, & San Diego.  You’ll want to consider spending time cruising these cities and searching for the stashes & surprises hidden throughout the cities. 

It’s expected that when you place an aftermarket powerhouse like Dub into the title that there would be some amazing customization options available for your car. MC3 compares well to NFSU when to the number of officially-licensed aftermarket items available for the cars.  Where MC3 really excels is both in the variety of vehicle available and what you can do to them beyond simple bolt-on upgrades.  What to chop-the-top on that ’57 Chevy Bel-Air? Done.  Want to add green flames to the exhaust? Done.  With the sheer volume of vehicles, parts, & mods available everyone should be able to create a racer that reflects their personality and tastes.

Unlike the NFSU series this game goes well beyond the tuner-scene and incorporates a wide variety of vehicles to the lineup.  Motorcycles, trucks, luxury sedans, super cars, & muscle-car classics round out the vehicle choices.  Players must learn the different driving characteristics of all these vehicle types in order to progress in career mode.  Races against the car clubs reward with giving special abilities you can use on the course.  The first ability called “zone” is limited to tuners, sport cars, & sport bikes.  It allows the racer to slow down time for a few seconds and control the vehicle with hyper-accuracy.  “Roar” allows muscle cars & choppers to send a shockwave ahead that pushes vehicles, people, and obstacles out of your driving path.  SUV’s, luxury sedans, and trucks get the “agro” ability, allowing these vehicles to ram through traffic and most obstacles.  Abilities allow for racers to enhance the race by using these features tactically for their racing benefit or simply for the fun. 

MC3 offers several race choices right from the start. Player may choose from Arcade Mode, the Race Editor, Online/Multiplayer gameplay, or start accumulating cars & money through Career Mode.

Arcade Mode is where to go for some quick, no fuss access to the racing.  However you only get access to the cities & cars you’ve already unlocked in career mode.  So if you want to jump into a quick race and drive the wickedly-fast McLaren you’re out of luck unless you’ve put some quality time into your racing career.  With the Race Editor players may create an unlimited number of custom built races throughout any of the three cities.

MC3 comes Xbox Live enabled and allows you to challenge up to seven other players online. There is both classic as well as new multiplayer modes to compete on.  Race stats, times, and rankings will all be tallied on Xbox Live.  The onlince experiece is further enhanced by Live’s ability to identify “laggers” and modify the game to dump the offenders.

A welcome change to MC3 is the minimal amount of characters, cut-scenes, and story-line.  The bad dialogue and obnoxious characters from MC2 are gone. Voice acting and character animation have been vastly improved and kept to a minimum so to not take away from the main focus - the racing. Each city has a single “garage owner” to guide you through the features of the game, let you know when new upgrades are available, and to give praise or criticism after each race. 

For career mode you start out as a virtual nobody with a little cash and a big desire to race big. You purchase your first car and big customizing right away with the remaining cash.  Unlike previous installments in the Midnight Club series there is no story-line to follow - only racing, winning, & upgrading. The garage owner gives you a few pointers and then hooks you up with the underground racing scene.  Enter city-sponsored races or tournaments for quick cash or challenge the car clubs to unlock parts & other upgrades. Races you encounter in career mode include basic checkpoint, point-to-point, and time trial races.  Career mode is where the bulk of the gameplay resides, with well over 20 hours of racing and ride tweaks. 

One thing MC3 is not is a purist racing simulation. Game play is more arcade-like than a simulation like Gran Turismo and the upcoming Forza Motorsports.  The handling physics don’t very too greatly between vehicles – all generally handle like an arcade racer.  This allows racers to indiscriminately turn corners at 120mph+, mow through trees & lightpoles, and make spectacular jumps over buildings and even aircraft carriers!  Sure it‘s unrealistic but the fun experienced easily out weighs this concern.

Graphics & Sound

MC3 looks spectacular!  Everything from the cars to the skyline look near perfect.  Rockstar sure took advantage of the Xbox’s hardware to deliver a visually stunning experience. The vehicles and cities were given a high amount of detail. Even the wheels are fully modeled in 3D so they’d be presented in true-to-life appearance and form. I did notice that in the upgrade configuration screen that the parts occasionally were displayed slightly incorrectly on the vehicles. Vinyls were missing portions to the logo or graphic, wheels were slow to load often showing the vehicle as floating on air.  However these were minor glitches that luckily didn’t carryover to the vehicles in races or in later configuration screens.  Also I’ve heard reports from other players that the frame rate lowers occasionally during busy and/or complex race scenes.  I did not experience this issue in gameplay causing me to believe that this issue may be limited to only the PS2 version of the game.  Ultimately the graphics look great at either 160mph or at a standstill. 

Just as a bad story-line or horrible voice-acting can whittle your will to continue playing a game, a poor soundtrack can just as easily take away from a gamer’s enjoyment.  A lesson well learned from the previous game in the series and the more-recent game Need For Speed Underground 2.  The soundtrack is large & diverse, playing tracks from well-known artists and virtual unknowns alike.  These songs seem to “flow” with the game, blending perfectly with the racing experience.  All sound is presented in Dolby Digital and custom soundtracks were also allowed to be used during gameplay.

Final Comments

Midnight Club 3 is a fun and worthwhile arcade racing game.  The career mode alone with its challenging races, hours of gameplay, and millions of upgrade combinations make it an attractive purchase.  Throw in the stunning graphics, superb soundtrack, and unique vehicle abilities and this game becomes a “must-have” for the racing fan. 

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