Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition doesn't seem like the most obvious choice to get the special edition treatment. But here we are, with Greatest Hits and Platinum Hits versions of the game on the PlayStation 2 and Xbox respectively, and this new version, dubbed Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix, does add a considerable amount of new content, while simultaneously dropping the price into budget territory. If you never bothered with Midnight Club 3 when it first came out, then this is most certainly the one to get.
But while Remix does pile a host of new vehicles, songs, and a new city onto the original game, it's not quite enough to entice those who already paid full price nearly a year ago.
The city of Tokyo is the big new addition to this special edition, although it doesn't really look all that much like Tokyo. We'll assume for the sake of brevity that you're already reasonably familiar with the basic ins and outs of Midnight Club 3; if you aren't, you should take a look at our full review of the original game before proceeding.
Suffice it to say, everything that could be said about the original game applies in the Remix version. The gameplay, graphics, sound, and features set are all completely intact, and are really just as enjoyable as they were in the original. After all, with the exception perhaps of Need for Speed Most Wanted, there really hasn't been a better street racer released since Midnight Club 3's debut last April. Just bear in mind that if you had any complaints about the original game, you'll still have them about this version.
Nothing's changed, including the game's relatively short list of flaws, especially the decidedly trial-and-error methodology of the game's races. However, there is a fair amount more to do in this version of Midnight Club 3.
In addition to the original game's three cities, the city of Tokyo has been added in a new mode, completely separate from the main career mode. Functionally, Tokyo operates very much the same as the other cities. And remember: There isn't much room for error. The bulk of the offline racing you'll be doing in Midnight Club 3 will likely be in the robust career mode. You begin with about 20 grand in your pocket and an introduction to a local garage owner, who sets you up with a ride of your choice and an "in" to the underground street racing scene.
Make no mistake, if you're looking for some kind of dramatic tale of intrigue or anything involving a lot of interaction with your typically stereotyped street racing characters, you won't find either here. The career mode focuses squarely on the racing, which is a welcome change from the hackneyed attempts at driving game stories that other similar games have tried.
There are multiple types of races to engage in during the career mode, all of which are structured around the basic checkpoint, point-to-point, and time trial races available throughout.
Basically, you start by getting together with various hookmen who will challenge you to a short series of races. Impressing them will get you shots at longer series of races with assorted car clubs, each of which revolves around specific car types.
So if there's a club that races with nothing but trucks, you'll need to have a truck or an SUV in your collection to participate in the races. While this might seem like a chore, it actually isn't, thanks to a number of tournaments that seem to ever-so-conveniently pop up right around the time a new car club challenges you.
In these tournaments, you can win new cars. And they're almost always the precise kinds of car you need to move forward. Apart from all these main races, there are also a number of side races available in each city that don't help your career but do provide you with extra cash. That's good, because you'll need it to fully trick out your whip. The car-customization element of Midnight Club 3 is possibly its best feature, despite not being terribly complex.
For under-the-hood improvements, you begin with a stock part for everything ranging from suspension systems, to brakes, to exhaust systems, to nitrous boosters, and more.
As you play, new upgrade parts will be shipped to your local garage, and you can buy them for boosts to your car's acceleration, top speed, and handling ratings. Of course, this wouldn't be a proper street racing game if it didn't provide you with plenty of gaudy ways to customize your car on the outside as well. You name it, you can throw it onto your car. Unfortunately, these types of customizations don't really have any effect on your car's performance at all, so it can occasionally be tough to want to spend the cash on something that's designed for pure aesthetic value.
Fortunately, it's pretty tough to go broke in the game, so it's not like you'll ever be horribly strapped for cash, even if you want all your cars to be sitting on 20s. Car customization is a big part of what makes Midnight Club 3 so much fun, and you'll have a host of real licensed cars to tweak to your delight.
The customization aspect of the game is where the subtitle "DUB Edition" comes in to play, as all the brands and styles of parts were included on the recommendations of the folks behind DUB Magazine.
In fact, they apparently played a part in car selection as well. While this might seem like the kind of thing that could turn into bad advertising for the magazine very quickly, it thankfully doesn't. You'll see the DUB logo pop up on occasional license plates and specialized cars, but it's never intrusive. The career mode is quite a lengthy affair, so it could take you upwards of 18 to 20 hours to complete, depending on how well you perform.
However, it's hardly the only mode you'll have to mess around with. Midnight Club also includes an arcade mode that's filled with all the career mode's single-player races, as well as a bunch of multiplayer ones. These multiplayer races are a little quirky, with some variations of capture the flag, tag, and paint games.
Admittedly, these games are kind of on the gimmicky side and aren't really much fun for more than a few plays each, but with so many different regular races to take part in, as well as a race editor mode that gives you the ability to set up your own checkpoint races, you're unlikely to run out of stuff to do anytime soon.
Hosts can create games using any of their unlocked races and cars, including all the crazy arcade games found offline. Features-wise, all the usual offerings are here, like buddy lists, leaderboards, and voice chat on the Xbox. However, there's one unique feature that no other online street racer has: Midnight Club 3 features what is, in essence, a basic clan mode.
In this case, they're called clubs, and you can rank your members along four tiers, including owner, officers, members, and pledges. While there isn't a whole lot to this feature, it's a neat way for more-competitive players to get together and organize. As far as online performance goes, all the games we had, including full eight-player races, featured little to no lag whatsoever.
The PS2 version seemed a little laggier than the Xbox version, but not by much at all, though. Part of what makes Midnight Club 3's racing so much fun is how fast the whole thing feels.
We're not talking Burnout 3-style speed here, but the way the game uses motion blur and other little visual touches to emphasize how fast you're going really adds to the frenetic feel of the racing. In addition, the game just has a nice look to it that presents itself well while you're speeding along. Why did you decide to go with licensed vehicles for this Midnight Club game? How many vehicle licenses are in the game? But even just two years ago car manufacturers would not allow their vehicles to be damaged in the game, so we said we didn't want to compromise on that.
But now manufacturers have changes their minds--so for Midnight Club 3 we have all the heavy hitters--Cadillac, Saleen, Aprilia, Hotmatch, Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, Ducati, Lotus, and tons more. There are 19 vehicle licenses and over 60 vehicles total. Licensed vehicles are crucial in Midnight Club 3, as we had to really represent DUB and street racing culture accurately while at the same time offering a wide variety of racing styles.
MG: Early in development we knew we wanted to have a lot more vehicles in the game than tuners, and we chose a comprehensive list of vehicles that we wanted for Midnight Club 3. But as we began working more closely with DUB, they advised us on adding even more, and they used their industry connections to help make it happen.
Now the list of vehicles in the game is really varied and extensive and goes beyond anything we initially expected. DUB's involvement went much deeper than that though-- they were heavily involved in the customization aspect of the game, so we knew what rim would work with what car, stuff like that. All of the parts in the game are licensed, so almost any ride you can create in real life, you can do in Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition.
Our goal was for the game to reflect all aspects of modern American car and bike culture, in terms of vehicle modification and what people are really racing with.
I think we succeeded in that. MG: The overall speeds of the vehicles in Midnight Club 3 are much faster, but that doesn't come at the expense of control. Considering the real-life feel and specs of each ride, we had to combine this with the spontaneous, open city arcade-style racing that defines the Midnight Club games. Add to that the performance modifications in the game and you begin to get a picture of the level of development that went into each vehicle.
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