Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition (Xbox)

Club Races are represented by gold stars on the map and they have strict entry requirements based on your vehicle class. It’s usually in these races that you’ll unlock one of the three special moves, such as Zone, Agro and Roar.

Tournaments are where you sort out the men from the boys and the boys from the lads, these races are pretty gruelling and collect big money at the end, good for allowing you to soup up your rides – but they are a tough challenge.

Your Garage in Career mode is the place where you’re going to spend even more time; money and effort in making your ride not only look sweet but also perform well. You can tune the performance of your car, throw in turbo-chargers and slap on some extra features while changing the rims, tyres, width and height of the ride. Every feature that you want to add or play with has been provided, all barring the tuning of the engine itself and the gear ratios etc – this is an arcade racer not meant to be a Gran Turismo or Forza game.

Not just the core of your car can be tinkered with; as you progress through the game you’ll unlock a lot more. You’ll be customising your ride with the latest spoilers, bumpers and bodykits, slapping on some new paint and decals. Adding flashing neons and even custom number plates, you can enter your own name for that personal touch – or rude words if you’re like certain friends of mine. You can even add custom text decals on the front and back windows, changing the font and giving them a chromed look in any custom colour you like.

There’s a lot to do in the garage before you are satisfied with the look of your ride and there’s a load of cars to buy/unlock, enough to keep the thrill-speed freaks happy I would say.

Arcade Mode

Unlock cars, buy new motors and customise them in the Career game, then bring them here to Arcade as well and mess about with any number of quick races. You can even have a friend tag along and race split screen, with or against you. You can customise the weather, time of day, pedestrians and traffic, turning them on or off, changing features at will until you’re happy – it’s all about how you want to play.

Autocross: Race through the streets, confined by barriers and try and get the best/fastest times over a number of selected laps.

Track: The same as the above except you’re not racing against the clock; you’re against other racers this time.

Capture the Flag: Now we start getting to the good stuff, there’s a flag, a drop off point and it’s a race to grab it and drop it off. You can nick the flag from the flag-holder by ramming into them. There are a number of options you can customise too, so it’s worthwhile checking them out before you start.