When Midnight Club 2 was released for Xbox, I was hooked
to continually play the game to the end and take unlocked
cars to online cruise. Since the release of MC2, there have
been plenty of street racers released for Xbox. With that,
Rockstar has enlisted the help of DUB magazine to release
the best street racing tuner videogame. Midnight Club 3: Dub
Edition is able to produce the speed and customization you
have been looking for.
Some New Things
Besides customization, there have been some other additions to
Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition. You will notice that traffic has
gotten heavy and most of the roads are wider than found in MC2.
Police have also been added for some "excitement." Once a cop
starts to chase you, get ready for some evasivemaneuvering to
avoid loosing your position. First they will try and tell you
to pull over and then they will try and ram you and get in front
of you. A nice touch is that there are also cops on bikes
instead of just having cop cars. Not to mention the nice list
of licensed vehicles available for you.
Best Customization Ever...
Of course the thing every tuning game is making claim to is "
deepest customization" over what is currently out. There may be
a few things that you saw in another tuner that isn't in here,
but MC3 makes up for it with new options. One thing that I've
been waiting for is custom window decals. You can now type in
your own wording for front/rear window vinyls. You can even
change the font type! It is limited to 8 characters and one
position, but I'm glad they've got this in and maybe they'll get
it even deeper next time. Even license plates have some nice
customization. You can now customize what you want your plates
to say as well as what state the plate is from. I can talk
about the customization for a long time but that would waste
time. In fact, instead of wasting time reading this review when
you could be customizing your own vehicles, I'll just say: Get
this game now.
Game Sound Check
Rockstar provides a great selection of genres for the
soundtrack. In-game, you simply press left/right on the d-pad
to change songs. You are also able to select which genres you
want to allow for fewer songs to change through in-game. And of
course the best part, custom soundtracks. At this time, there
is a glitch with custom soundtracks that causes an error after
a race when playing a song that is above the 7'th position of
your soundtrack. A fix will soon be available to download,
however. Of course the game also doesn't disappoint for the
sound effects and car noises. Everything comes out nicely as
you make your way to the finish line. Voice acting isn't that
bad either.
Nice Looking Car
Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition features very nice looking car
models and pretty good city environments. While I'm not going
to say that the cities look better than any other game, they do
look good and plenty of detail went in. There are also some
destructibility to the environments. Trees will pretty much
explode on impact and light poles can be knocked down. There
are also some building windows that can be plowed through and
possibly revealing a shortcut. Midnight Club 3 also features
good weather effects. Sometimes there is some slowdown produced
from these however. Vehicle damage is also in the game. That's
right licensed vehicles that get damaged in a game. Damage
isn't that great, but you will be able to scratch the hell out
of your newly tuned car and get your windshield broken as well
as some denting.
The Videogame that Keeps going and going and going...
Another thing that Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition has going for it
is its length. If you want to buy just one that will last for a
while, Midnight Club 3 will take up all of your time trying to
get 100% completion. Finding races is easy because they are all
marked on your map and allowing you to activate the navigation
system to a chosen destination. The navigation arrow won't tell
you to go down this street and turn down that one. Because
there can be multiple ways to a destination, it merely points to
your destination leaving you to get on the right roads. This
actually isn't confusing and works out. Keeping things
arcadish, you can 'learn' special abilities depending on your
car class. One of the first ones to learn is a matrix-like
slowdown allowing for maneuvering through heavy traffic. This
tends to be very helpful when using nitros and you need to make
a quick turn but don't want to put on the brakes and waste your
nitros.
Show off your Ride
Once you've fully tricked out ride, you can show it off online
with up to 8 people in a race. A great feature for online play
is that if the host leaves or gets disconnected for some reason,
the game continues as the next person becomes host. Besides
normal arcade modes, Midnight Club 3 features Capture the Flag,
Frenzy (dodge cars to gain points), and Tag. Those without Live
can play 2 player split-screen or 8 through system link.
Overview
I've been waiting for Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition since it was
announced. I must say that the game delivered on what I was
hoping for. There is so much to do in the game that you'll want
to dedicate all of your time to it. The environment graphics
may not amaze you but they aren't terrible. When compared to
NFS: Underground 2, Midnight Club 3 comes out on top and plays
better over all.
