Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition

"The Waiting Game"

This game could have been renamed Midnight Club 3: Wait Edition and it would have the same effect, because you'll be doing a lot of it. If you're not familiar with the series, it is a game to the likes with the NFS Underground series, you play as a street racer looking to earn cash, have the most pimped-out ride, and earn the respect of your fellow racers to become the best(oddly there is no respect meter though). You start with a measly $22,000, which in this game doesn't get you much. Just enough to buy a stock car and one mod. You progress by winning challenges and can earn new cars by winning tournaments. Beating certian people earns you the right to challenge clubs or more people. This is essentially the story of the game. Like most racing games, it isn't much of one.

Graphics: 8/10
A little above par for a 1st gen game. Car models are astoundingly detailed and even small vinyls show up in amazing clarity. Environments are huge and well detailed. However, the framerate jumps around and never breaks 30fps. There is noticable slowdown when multiple cars are onscreen, but it isn't too terrible and you get used to it before long.

Sound/Music: 9/10
The game stays true to its console counterpart. There are dozens of tracks in hip-hop, rock, techno, and dance, so it will be a long while before you start hearing repeats. SFX are decent, some engine sounds are pretty generic though and don't stand out. The biggest issue here is the volumes. On the default settings you will be mashing the volume buttons constantly. Voices on the tutorials are whisper-quiet and unless you play in silence with the volume cranked, you won't hear them. Then you enter a race and the music blasts out and you have to turn it down to avoid waking the dead. However this can be altered in the options menu, short of the voices which are at a fixed level and cannot be adjusted. Not a big deal, but could have been easily fixed. In other words, MC3 stays true to its console counterparts in this respect.

Gameplay: 6/10
The game baisically pans out like I described in the introduction. You buy a car, win races to get money. Use the money to buy upgrades for your car, SUV, truck, or bike. It's your vanilla-flavored street racing scenario, don't expect anything new. Everything on your car is customizable. Everything from complete paint jobs to altering the color of a little sticker in the window can be done. Performance upgrades are set to levels, you can't choose specific parts. You upgrade Brakes to level 1. Upgrade your Intake to level 2, and so on. It detracts from the real feeling of "tuning" your tuner.

Controls are tight, and the analog nub works wonderfully on this game. Controls can be mapped to any button you want, a nice feature that should be in every game. No issues here, everything works flawlessly for me on the default controls.

Ah, the load times. This game would be a full point higher if it wasn't for these loading waits. On average, the load time for the garage is around 30 seconds. The wait for an entire city is anywhere from a minute to 90 seconds. Every race has to load for a minute, and re-load after each heat. Every time you want to change something on your car, wait another 30 seconds for the garage to load. It gets really annoying having to wait constantly to play the game. Spend 2 minutes waiting to get in and out of a 3 minute race. Not fun, and it really breaks up the gameplay with constant loading. There isn't even anything to look at on the screen. A black screen with arrows going across the top and bottom. A paragraph with interesting car facts or bits of street racing trivia on the loading screen would make it far less of an annoyance.

Buy/Rent/Don't Bother: Rent first. If you find you can get over the load times, you're looking at a fantastic handheld racer. If you can, I would recommend a purchase here. It has up to 6 or 8 player wifi(I can't remember which), while NFS:U only has support for two. A solid racer, and the loading times are the perfect legenth to go take a leak or get a drink to promote future leaks.

Bottom Line: A solid, well-adapted street racing game that suffers from a poor engine, resulting in legenthy load times.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/25/05