You owe me a ten second car

The biggest in-thing at the moment seems to be the ‘tuner’ scene and with magazines like DUB joining forces with Rockstar Games for the rip-roaring Midnight Club 3 DUB edition game, games like Need For Speed Underground 2 are made and broken on the strength of their customisation options, what parts can you fit on your car and what cool features can you tweak.

Midnight Club 3 for the Xbox and the PS2 hopes to push this particular new-wave even further by adding the ‘deepest customisation yet’ to the genre, the question that I have to ask is – what is the deepest customisation? While Midnight Club 3 is a good game and offers a rapid-fire full-throttle thrill-ride, it suffers from a few hiccups that can’t be ignored which are thankfully only in the actual gameplay and not in the graphics.

Since this is a cross-platform review it’s going to be a bit different to my usual style, as I experiment with methods to get the information across. I will point out my core task here is to review the game and not bitch about the lack of features on the systems, or how the PS2 graphics look dated compared to the Xbox, because in this case Rockstar know their stuff and have eked every bit of performance out of the PS2 to make the game look and play as well as the Xbox version.

What I care about is Midnight Club 3 DUB edition, not the war of the consoles in this case – since there’s very little difference between the versions, to warrant any wrists slapped.

Story

Yeah, right, forget the story and let’s put the pedal to the metal. It’s about tricking out your ride and slamming the gas. You join the scene as a young but pretty good driver, make a few tuner friends and get into the highly illegal street racing scene, from then on its faster cars, breakneck speeds and big air all the way.

Gameplay

Racing titles have really come a long way in the last few years especially as fans have demanded more bang for their buck. It’s no longer a matter of climbing into the driver’s seat of a mid-range automobile, gamers want to be able to drive the virtual beast of their dreams and deck it out with enough nitrous oxide to blow a big hole in the ground if they could.

Midnight Club 3 is up against tough competition to slam-dunk games like NFSUG2 and provide something we haven’t seen before. For some people racing has to be either, realistic or arcade and some folk like me would prefer a mix of both, with a bit of realism and some insane driving stunts, back flips and two-wheel manic tyre-screeching.