PS2 Review: Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix (2006)

The Midnight Club franchise is truly one of the biggest players in the street racing/car customization genre, and for good reason. It offers a diverse selection of cars, trucks, as well as a selection of sport bikes and choppers, and many different ways to customize them, including (but not limited to) chopping the top, underglow, lowering the chassis, chrome accents, body kits, rims, tires, hydraulics, etc. More than any other car game, I felt like with MC3 I was able to make my car my own, while others, such as Forza Motorsport or Need for Speed: Most Wanted, felt more limited, with my options mostly settled for me (with the exception of vinyl and paint. However NFS: Carbon had some interesting modification abilities for wheels, albeit cartoon-looking).

Of course, the ability to do stupid crap with your car is not at the heart of any racing game. NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 remains my favorite racing game even though it offered no modifications. Why? Because it has one of the finest and funnest driving experiences of any game. And though MC3 is not quite up to the same standards, it still offers hours of entertainment.

One of the difficulties I found with the gameplay was that my ability to win races depended just as much, if not more, on upgrading my car's performance to the greatest extent possible as my driving ability. I'm happy to say that there are many close races, but this must have left me frustrated at the time; one of my controllers will no longer vibrate properly because of my slamming it against an object whilst playing this game. No doubt, the large amount of traffic in this franchise leads to many collisions, and this can by very annoying. You will rarely feel the freedom of the open road because you'll be too busy dodging crashes. Another difficulty, and one that can also be very frustrating, is the difficulty of navigating the checkpoints. There aren't really racetracks in MC3 but rather series of checkpoints, requiring one to keep one eye on the road and the other on the HUD. For most ordered races these routes are fairly straightforward, but there are also unordered races where one only need reach every checkpoint in any fashion. These can require much trial-and-error to find the best ways to tackle them.

The frustrations aren't enough to keep MC3 from being a great racing game, though. Even with its age, it remains a gem and, in my opinion, is better than more recent next-gen entries in the franchise, such as Midnight Club: Los Angeles. If you want to find some racing on the cheap, MC3: DUB Edition Remix is a good bet.