Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Review

Midnight Club 3 tweaks the already great gameplay of the series and adds in a ton of fully customizable licensed vehicles to make this not only the best Midnight Club game but also the best street racing game on the market. The racing itself is immensely satisfying and the ability to customize your car however you want and race it online is just icing on the cake. It doesn’t look or sound as impressive as some recent games, but the gameplay is top notch and worth the price of admission.

Overview

Midnight Club 3 is an arcade racer where you have a whole city to race around in and explore. Actually, there are three cities in MC3 – San Diego, Atlanta, and Detroit. You start the career mode in San Diego with a handful of cash and a buddy at an auto shop and it is up to you to buy a car and then head out into the city to show the other racers what you are made of. The cities are huge and you are free to drive around them and explore at will. There are twelve Rockstar logos hidden throughout each city, so in addition to driving around and learning the layout you are also on the lookout for the hidden items which keeps the game interesting. The career mode is laid out in such a way that there are rival racers you have to find and then beat roaming the city as well as optional races that you can beat to earn some extra cash and tournaments pop up now and then. There are also car clubs representing the different vehicles in the game (tuners, muscle cars, luxury cars, choppers, etc.) that you have to beat using that specific type of car. This means you can’t just stick to one car like you could in Need for Speed Underground 2 and you actually have to buy and tune a large variety of vehicles which is fun.

Modes

The career mode spans dozens of races and you’ll switch vehicles many, many times over the course of the 18-20 hours it takes to beat. This is just the start of the fun to be had with Midnight Club 3, however. You can take free runs and just explore the cities as well as take part in arcade races. The arcade mode is made up of the races from the career mode but here you can just race them one after the other without the other stuff in between. A lot of the individual races are a lot of fun and they are well worth going back through and playing again. There are also some quirky side games such as capture the flag, tag and paint that are fun for a while but not as good as the regular races. In addition to all of this, you can also create your own races by placing checkpoints around the map. Basically, there is a lot to do in Midnight Club 3.

If you have Xbox Live, the game expands even more. Up to eight players can race against each other in any of the races and modes found in the offline game. MC3 takes it one step further by allowing you to create your own clans where like-minded individuals can join together to take on other car clubs. It is a neat idea and works pretty well.

Racing

Everything in Midnight Club 3 works so well because of three reason. The first is that the racing is pure and fast and fun. The second is that the races are well designed and the AI is perfectly balanced. The third reason is that there are a huge number of customization options for the various types of cars which will keep you coming back again and again.

Let’s discuss the racing first. The cities are designed with top speed in mind and it is very possible to drive around at 200 mph and never slow down. That is freaking awesome. This is an arcade racer through and through and I like to be able to tear around the cities as fast as I possibly can. You can also perform a few specialized tricks such as drafting behind opponents to pick up nitro boosts and tipping your car up on two wheels to squeeze through tight areas. There are other moves that allow you to do things such as slow down time so you can weave through traffic easier or blast the traffic cars out of your way as well. The result of all this is a smooth, fun, and fast experience that rivals Burnout 3 for sheer speed and insanity. MC3 is a step above every other street racing game in terms of pure racing and that is probably the best compliment I can give it.

Course Design and AI

The racing and races are so amazingly fun because of the great design of the races themselves and the great AI that you are racing against. Most of the races are ordered races where you have to get from point A to point B while passing through checkpoints spread throughout the city in a specific order, but there are also unordered races as well as some time trials. The checkpoints are spread around in such a way that there is sure to be a number of crucial corners and bottlenecks in each race but there are also usually several ways to get around each course. Your job is to find the best line and perfect it which can take a few tries. It never becomes frustrating, though, because the difference between winning and losing is taking a corner a different way or threading through a tight alley so it is always on your shoulders which is satisfying. The AI in MC3 is balanced in such a way that they will challenge you but they are far from perfect drivers. If you can avoid wrecking too much, you’ll win, but if you take a wrong turn or rear end a bus the AI will be right there to take the lead but you can usually catch up. It is challenging without feeling unfair.