Score
Gameplay:	9
Graphics:	8
Sound:	9
FunFactor:	9
PlasmaFactor:	9
Overall:	8.8

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Review
May 1, 2005 by Mike Lanier

by Mike Lanier - May 1, 2005

Racing games have been around for a very long time. They�ve come in countless varieties, from Pole Position to Super Mario Kart, Burnout 3 to Gran Turismo. In fact, the gaming market is so flooded with racing games that any new title must have something beyond simple racing to set it apart. The Burnout series offered insane crashes. Gran Turismo games are all apart strict realism and simulation. Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition (MC3) offers living cities, incredible speeds, and almost limitless options for vehicle customization, but is that enough to keep you in the driver�s seat?

Street Rules

When you start playing MC3 the first thing you�ll notice is the open city structure of this game. Instead of going through menus to select races, you drive around each city looking for tournaments, challengers, and marked city races. All of these are shown on a HUD in the lower left side corner of the screen. Each of the three cities in MC3 (San Diego, Detroit, and Atlanta) has a mechanic who will occasionally tell you about new challengers, competitions, and car parts. Driving around the city between races, besides being more fun than just navigating menus, allows the player to get used to the streets, discover shortcuts, and even find secret car parts. After getting used to a city simply find a challenger or tournament and it�s time to start racing.

The races in MC3 differ from most other racing games because of MC3�s open city design. This means you aren�t restricted to one set path to complete a race. Checkpoints, marked by fiery flares, are dotted throughout the city and you merely need to hit all of them in order to complete a race. Don�t feel like taking the highway to get to the next checkpoint? Use back-alleys and ramps to launch your car over it instead. You can use broken carnival rides, natural hills, and even boats to send your car airborne in lieu of sticking to the simpler, ground paths. There are always several ways to complete a race and this keeps races fresh, even when you�re repeating the same one over and over to grab the first place prize. Aside from offering interesting, living cities, MC3 also touts a very fun car physics system.

Controlling the vehicles in MC3 is an absolute blast. The car handling is definitely more arcade-like than simulation, and this works perfectly. Ducking between oncoming cars, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, and power sliding through turns feels right. Driving in MC3 is more about careful turns and avoiding obstacles than realism. While the overarching control is great, each vehicle sports a unique feel. Different cars and motorcycles will accelerate, slide, and take turns in drastically different ways. If you don�t like how your car handles you can take it to the garage and upgrade everything from brakes to engine intake. This customization makes it possible to create a vehicle tuned to your particular mode of play and keeps the player engaged as you must win races to earn the money necessary purchasing upgrades. In addition to great, customizable cars and open city racing, MC3 also adds some interesting special moves.

Almost every arcade racer has some sort of speed boost or nitro option that adds to the overall strategy. MC3 does as well (you can purchase nitrous at any garage), but it also offers a slipstream turbo system. If you�re close enough to a car in front of you it will start giving off wavy lines representing a slipstream. Stay between these and a turbo meter will charge (the closer you are to the car the faster this meter charges). When the meter is full, hit the turbo button and you will get a speed boost that doesn�t use up your nitrous. This move becomes crucial as the races get more difficult and often determines who wins prize money and who loses face. The slipstream turbo isn�t the only special move in MC3, though. You can tilt your car onto two wheels to get between traffic, shift weight in the air to facilitate better landings, and even utilize some very unrealistic (but undeniably cool) moves that defy the laws of physics.

As you progress through MC3, different car and motorcycle clubs will challenge you to races. Complete several of a club�s races and you will learn a new special move. These moves are specific to certain car types. Tuners and sports bikes have �Zone� and muscle cars and choppers have �Roar,� for example. These moves are each governed by special meters you must fill by playing in different ways. Fill your Roar meter by power sliding with a muscle car, or fill your Zone meter by not hitting walls or cars with your tuner. Each special moves is different and adds another level of strategy to MC3. Zone allows you to slow time to make precise turns, Roar pushes all traffic away from you with a sonic burst, and Agro allows you to bash other cars out of the way without slowing down. Each of these is helpful in different situations and, combined with the open cities and customizable vehicles, guarantee that no two races will be the same.

On top of the robust career mode, MC3 offers a very entertaining online element. Up to 8 players can cruise around cities, play capture the flag, race, or even play tag. Online play is smooth and rewarding. It also allows you to show off your sweet custom ride and earn bragging rights. MC2�s multiplayer mode rounds out a very entertaining and accessible game that offers tons of options and tons of fun.

Blurry and Hurried

Most racing games restrict the player to a set track. This can be annoying from a gameplay perspective, but this restriction allows programmers to control what parts of a track a player will see and when they will see them. That means a game with restrictive tracks can, by its very nature, pump out amazing graphics without having to worry about having to render a side street a player decides to veer onto. MC3 offers big, living cities that, while detailed and vibrant, simply lack the graphical punch of other Xbox racing titles. Street and building textures are blurry. Environmental geometry is sometimes overly simple. The cars in MC3 are substantially more detailed than the environments, though. Vehicles feature very intricate modeling, texturing, and details down to the customizable color of your car�s brake drums. Even the vehicles suffer visually, though, because they reflect the environments. Environmental reflections flicker and are generally very low quality. Yet MC3 remains a pretty good looking game. This is accomplished by its style and effects.

Each of the three cities in MC3 has its own layout and its own feel. From the rich neighborhoods of Atlanta to a dilapidated carnival in San Diego, these cities have style. More impressive than style is each city�s layout. These cities come complete with drastically different systems of streets, alleys, and buildings that can be driven through. The architecture is varied so much even within each city that driving around in one locale never gets boring. While technical details like textures aren�t as impressive as the cities� structure and style, Rockstar remedies these technical limitations with a bevy of effects.

A constantly motion blur paints over everything on screen when you race, making poor textures and simple geometry fading memories. Tail lights will create glowing red lines and traffic zips by with an intensity unique to this title. Particle effects are peppered throughout when streetlights break or cars collide, and vehicles take and dish out damage ranging from scratches to shattered windshields. These effects (but mostly the motion blur) blend together the good and hide the bad parts of MC3�s graphical presentation creating a stimulating and intense visual experience.

Power Sliding with 50 Cent

Everything in MC3�s sound design is great. People will yell at you following near misses, cars honk their horns as you rocket past them, and an eclectic mix of electronic, hiphop, and rock music keeps you in the moment. The engine noises in here are really great and if you have a subwoofer you�re in for a treat. There�s nothing quite like hearing the car behind you use a nitro boost and feeling the room shake. Also, the sound created by near misses with oncoming cars adds to the intensity created by the visuals that makes you feel like you�re really in your car, rocketing through the night. The soundtrack is diverse and entertaining with artists ranging from Fabolous to Nine Inch Nails. The sound effects are very solid overall and this game features one of the best soundtracks ever contained in a game. Everything serves to further the feel of street racing and nothing feels out of place.

High Speed Fun

Playing Midnight Club 3 is thrilling and challenging. Modifying your ride and racing it in tournaments and against challengers allows for a sense of pride that few other games can offer. Taking shortcuts and going airborne at high speeds gets the adrenaline pumping, and the sheer number of ways to race and customize your vehicle keeps this game fresh and fun throughout. If you like racing games and customizing cars this game will be extremely fun. If racing games aren�t your thing this game might actually turn you on to the genre. Its fast, arcade racing and open city design breaks away from racing game norms and offers a truly unique experience.

A Plasma Pool of Options

MC3 offers over 60 licensed vehicles, three big cities, and crazy special moves gives the player an incredible number of ways to play. Customizing cars and motorcycles with different paint jobs, rims, and decals is loads of fun on its own. Multiplayer capture the flag is a blast and all of the races, tournaments, and challenges offered make this a huge racing package.

 

Ready, Set, Buy!

Street racing isn�t new to video games, and open cities aren�t new either. Rockstar has done something special with this game, though, creating a vivid, underground world of racing and personalization that no other game can touch. If you like racing games this is a no-brainer. If you even like cars this is a no-brainer. The combination of special moves, living cities, sound quality, and speed make this game a very solid title that is well worth your money.