The car-customization element of Midnight Club 3 is possibly its best feature, despite not being terribly complex. For under-the-hood improvements, you begin with a stock part for everything ranging from suspension systems, to brakes, to exhaust systems, to nitrous boosters, and more. As you play, new upgrade parts will be shipped to your local garage, and you can buy them for boosts to your car's acceleration, top speed, and handling ratings. Of course, this wouldn't be a proper street racing game if it didn't provide you with plenty of gaudy ways to customize your car on the outside as well. Body kits, decals, custom paint jobs, $20,000 rims... You name it, you can throw it onto your car. Unfortunately, these types of customizations don't really have any effect on your car's performance at all, so it can occasionally be tough to want to spend the cash on something that's designed for pure aesthetic value. Fortunately, it's pretty tough to go broke in the game, so it's not like you'll ever be horribly strapped for cash, even if you want all your cars to be sitting on 20s.
Car customization is a big part of what makes Midnight Club 3 so much fun, and you'll have a host of real licensed cars to tweak to your delight.
The customization aspect of the game is where the subtitle "DUB Edition" comes in to play, as all the brands and styles of parts were included on the recommendations of the folks behind DUB Magazine. In fact, they apparently played a part in car selection as well. While this might seem like the kind of thing that could turn into bad advertising for the magazine very quickly, it thankfully doesn't. You'll see the DUB logo pop up on occasional license plates and specialized cars, but it's never intrusive.
The career mode is quite a lengthy affair, so it could take you upwards of 18 to 20 hours to complete, depending on how well you perform. However, it's hardly the only mode you'll have to mess around with. Midnight Club also includes an arcade mode that's filled with all the career mode's single-player races, as well as a bunch of multiplayer ones. These multiplayer races are a little quirky, with some variations of capture the flag, tag, and paint games. Admittedly, these games are kind of on the gimmicky side and aren't really much fun for more than a few plays each, but with so many different regular races to take part in, as well as a race editor mode that gives you the ability to set up your own checkpoint races, you're unlikely to run out of stuff to do anytime soon.
On top of all that, Midnight Club 3 also happens to be online for both the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. Hosts can create games using any of their unlocked races and cars, including all the crazy arcade games found offline. Features-wise, all the usual offerings are here, like buddy lists, leaderboards, and voice chat (on the Xbox). However, there's one unique feature that no other online street racer has: Midnight Club 3 features what is, in essence, a basic clan mode. In this case, they're called clubs, and you can rank your members along four tiers, including owner, officers, members, and pledges. While there isn't a whole lot to this feature, it's a neat way for more-competitive players to get together and organize. As far as online performance goes, all the games we had, including full eight-player races, featured little to no lag whatsoever. The PS2 version seemed a little laggier than the Xbox version, but not by much at all, though.
Part of what makes Midnight Club 3's racing so much fun is how fast the whole thing feels. We're not talking Burnout 3-style speed here, but the way the game uses motion blur and other little visual touches to emphasize how fast you're going really adds to the frenetic feel of the racing. In addition, the game just has a nice look to it that presents itself well while you're speeding along. The environments are just detailed enough to look excellent while racing, though they're a little less so when you're not moving. All the cars are highly detailed, and no customizable element feels out of place or looks weird when added on. The cars even crunch up pretty well when you crash, though it actually takes multiple severe crashes to really make the damage noticeable; otherwise, it's just some scrapes and minor dents. With all that said, the one notable flaw with the game is its frame rate, especially on the PS2. On average, the game moves at a playable speed. But in certain situations, like when too many crashes go on or when heavy rain effects are turned on, the action slows down significantly. Again, the PS2 version suffers from a lot more of this than the Xbox version, but they both have their bouts with slowdown.
The audio category is perhaps the one area where Midnight Club 3 is most improved over its predecessor. Midnight Club II had a severe problem with cheesy voice acting literally running rampant all over the game, which, as you can imagine, became very obnoxious very quickly. In Midnight Club 3, the amount of voice acting has been pared down significantly to just include cutscenes with the garage owners, in addition to some occasional pre- and postrace words of wisdom from them over your radio. The characters are still a little cheesy, but they're hardly offensive. The best part of the audio presentation is the sound effects. When you're racing, the din of engines, crashes, and objects whizzing by at alarming speeds is really quite impressive. This is especially true if you have surround sound, as the Dolby Digital support on the Xbox version is pretty spectacular.
The game's sense of speed can be very impressive, provided the frame rate holds up.
The soundtrack consists of a huge roster of hip-hop, rock, dance hall, and electronic artists, including such name acts as The Game, M.I.A., Kasabian, Queens of the Stone Age, Beenie Man, Nine Inch Nails, the Ying Yang Twins, and Jimmy Eat World. Some of the genres are a little pervasive (translation: a little too much dance hall for the game's own good), and there are a couple of weird song choices (like the oddly timed inclusion of Marilyn Manson's "Rock Is Dead"), but all told, it's a great soundtrack. Plus, while in a race, you can separate the soundtrack out by genre if you like. And on the Xbox, you can simply play one of your custom soundtracks.
Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is ultimately a great arcade street racer with plenty of lasting value. The career mode, with its lengthy list of races and deep customization mode, would by itself make the game worthwhile. However, the addition of entertaining online play, arcade races, and a race editor really makes this one of the best street racers currently on the market. Fans of the franchise will find a lot to like about Midnight Club 3. And those who have never experienced the series would do well to give this entry in it a try.
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