Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is an open-world street racing video game developed by Rockstar San Diego and published by Rockstar Games in 2005. This game focuses on illegal racing on the streets of San Diego, Atlanta and Detroit, and offers players the opportunity to customize their vehicle and compete in a variety of racing challenges. This review will explore the game's strengths and weaknesses, gameplay and user experience.

About the game

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition brings a wide variety of vehicles for players to choose from and customize. There are 66 real-brand vehicles available, from classic cars to modern racing cars. Players can customize their vehicle with a wide variety of parts and accessories, including tires, rims, paint and body kits. This customization allows players to create a unique vehicle tailored to their driving style.

The release enhances and expands the Midnight Club formula by adding new cities, more customizable vehicles and collaborations with DUB Magazine. Players can compete in online championships, challenges and DUB Edition tests, as well as the possibility of appearing on the cover of DUB Magazine ingame.

Gameplay

The gameplay of this game is exciting and challenging, adding to the excitement of street racing. Players must compete in a variety of racing challenges, including circuit racing, point-to-point racing and speed racing. Players can also challenge other drivers in impromptu street races.

In addition, the game offers a "NOS" (nitrous oxide) system that allows players to temporarily increase the speed of their vehicle during races. This can be crucial for winning challenging races and increasing the excitement of the game.

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition can be compared to other open-world street racing games, such as Need for Speed and Burnout Paradise. However, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition distinguishes itself from these games by the variety of vehicles and customization available. In addition, the exciting and challenging gameplay of Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is unique and offers a thrilling gaming experience.

Review: 8/10

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is an exciting open-world street racing game that offers a wide variety of vehicles and customization. Even though Rockstar is more widely known for their more open games like the GTA series, they do put a lot of focus in their driving mechanics and it is perfectly proven in this game.

Pros:

• Great variety of real-brand vehicles available to choose from and customize
• Exciting and challenging gameplay that adds to the thrill of street racing
• Wide open world that allows players to explore and discover new racing challenges

Cons:

• The game's story is somewhat limited and may not be compelling enough for some players
• Some missions can be repetitive and may cause the game to lose interest

Adding more features than ever before and coming back with a bang, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition challenges all other arcade racing games to be the best they can be. In this anticipated sequel, you'll gear up for tough street races as you peel through three major cities around the United States. It's packed to the brim with new features and content, including seven distinct vehicle types, full appearance overhauls, and much more. Fans of arcade-style racing games are guaranteed hours of high-speed enjoyment with this amazing title.

Main Game Features

• Burn rubber in three open city maps
• Five unique race types
• Customize your vehicle's appearance and performance

Story

Unlike most arcade racing games, the single-player story mode is the main meat and potatoes of Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition. In the game, you play as a new racer arriving in San Diego, eager to get your name out there. After falling in with the owner of a tuning garage, you'll get hooked up with a car and set out. With some tips from trusted friends, your reputation grows beyond the city limits. Before long, you'll head to both Atlanta and Detroit to take on their best drivers, continuing to become the hottest racer around. Eventually, with the Champion Series crown in your sights, you'll need to defeat every racer that comes your way.

Obviously, the point of the game isn't the plot, but it's good to see Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition offer some reasoning behind the racing. When compared to the narrative offerings in racing games like Gran Turismo 4 and Test Drive Unlimited, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is a clear winner. It shows that a tiny bit of setup goes a long way in rewarding the player, as it's far more fun to win when there are stakes.

Gameplay

As the sequel to Midnight Club II, Midnight Club 3: DUB edition improves on almost every aspect of the game. For starters, there are over 60 different vehicles in the game, all of which are licensed and resemble real-world automobiles. These are separated into 7 different vehicle types, including motorcycles, muscle cars, trucks, and more. When you start your single-player career, your options are limited, but you'll be able to unlock vehicles quickly as you complete races. If you really enjoy how one car feels, you can even upgrade its parts, pushing its performance grade up in rank. You are also able to customize your car as you see fit, changing the color, rims, and more.

There are 5 race types to compete in throughout career mode, which mostly boil down to checkpoint-style races, sprints, and circuit races. Checkpoint races give you the opportunity to cut across the town, taking shortcuts and speeding through alleys to pass your opponents. If you spend time memorizing the street layouts of each city, you'll be at a huge advantage. Multiplayer races can also be enjoyed in online lobbies, although the exclusive modes are only fun a handful of times.

Conclusion

Overall, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is the best game in the series and a racing game that pushes the boundaries of what's expected in the genre. The ability to fully customize any of the 60 vehicles in the game is awesome, as are the distinct cities you race in.

Pros

• Sharp and responsive controls
• Lots of different vehicles to unlock
• Amazing track designs

Cons

• Multiplayer modes are simple
• Learning city routes is frustrating
• Special moves aren't very balanced

I must admit that a week ago, I had no idea what DUB was. I'm not cool, not in the know ' none of that. (And if you're as clueless as me, DUB is a magazine focused on the automotive lifestyle). On the other hand, I had a good idea of what the Midnight Club series was: fast, fun arcade influenced street racing from Rockstar Entertainment. So when the two combined in Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition , I wasn't sure what to expect: brand name name-dropping or high-speed hijinks?

Midnight Club 3 isn't a huge departure from Midnight Club 2. The focus is still on illegal street races in a slew of cars, and there's a definite thrill driving at breakneck speeds around huge, sprawling cities with shortcuts upon shortcuts shortening the way to each next checkpoint. Likewise, the sense of speed is definitely there, and the track and city layout, combined with all the shortcut opportunities makes for an absolute blast.

There's a reason Midnight Club 3 dons the DUB brand name, though: you can now completely trick out your car, both under the hood and outside it. The customization options seem endless, especially the superficial changes to your car: from rims to taillights, from customized paint jobs to flashy neon lights, from mirror tints to body kits ' it's all there. It's a fantastic addition to the series, making the progression in the game a much more rewarding experience. You don't get nearly as many cars in your garage as before, but even so, it's a worthwhile trade-off.

Plus, Midnight Club 3 looks sharp. Like with the Grand Theft Auto titles, a lot of credit has to be given to Rockstar for creating huge, seamless environments that act as your own playground of racing mayhem. The cars look sharp and shiny, the intricate environments feel alive, teeming with cars and pedestrians, and a few neat visual effects like blurring that were obviously borrowed from other street racers help create a strong sense of speed.

It's hard to stand out in the crowded arcade racer genre, but with equally solid gameplay and visuals, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition does just that. If you've ever dreamed of owning a custom Nissan Skyline, but are working with a 93' Honda Civic budget (with spinning rims from Wal-Mart), check out Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition and live out your dreams vicariously through your PlayStation 2.

It would be hard to argue that Rockstar Games doesn't know how to develop a winning formula, so the question is did they put forth the effort with Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition or did they rest on the laurels of the successful series and make a minimal set of updates? It's got to be tempting but Rockstar Games didn't squander this opportunity and creates one of the better arcade racing games I've seen in some time.

The trick is to not put some cheesy story together in an attempt to keep the game interesting or focus only on racing which can become dull in a hurry. Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition avoids this in a number of creative and clever ways. First, there are three actual cities you'll be able to drive through starting with San Diego and adding Detroit and Atlanta. In each of these cites you can drive around at will looking for races while learning the turns and obstacles of the streets. Besides being able to drive through the streets, there are an enormous amount of cars and upgrades available using the cash won while racing. In addition, if the career mode isn't your thing, there's an arcade mode, networking mode, and race editor to keep you going.

The actual racing won't disappoint either with tight handling and a forgiving, over-the-top physics engine. There's no realism here and who would want any in this type of game. You'll be for quite a ride as you smash and bump your way through the different cities.

The visuals and audio effects hold true as well and bring the whole game together. Cars and environments look great with plenty of detail and the sound tracks will meet most expectations.

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition makes its mark with open city driving, in-depth upgrading, and plenty of arcade racing. This is a game anybody can pick up and enjoy over an extended period of time.