Every time I heard the TV commercial for Midnight Club 3, my head would turn to watch it. It just looked so good and was making me very impatient to play it.
Once I got my copy, I had to wait two days to actually play it, because my husband was hogging it right from the start. When I finally grabbed the controller, I didn’t put it down for 4 hours, and that was because my wrist was hurting (old injuries affecting gameplay, can you believe it?). I was impressed.
The game features 66 vehicles (ranging from sports cars to bikes, pick-up trucks and classic muscle cars) from 22 famous makers, including West Coast Choppers, Lotus, Lamborghini, Cadillac, Dodge (including my favorite, the Viper) and Chrysler (the gorgeous 300c is there too).
The customization list is extensive. The options range from paint jobs, vinyls and rim colors to tire size and width, and go all the way down to the tiniest detail like stickers and license plate letters or style. Hydraulics, neon lights, wheelie bars, I can safely say Midnight Club 3 really lets you pimp up your ride.
A detailed upgrade list includes everything from transmission to brakes, intake to nitrous and a bunch of other things that I am very illiterate about as to where they are located in a car, so in a way it’s something new for me to learn.
I found it a bit odd that tire width or size didn’t affect the vehicle’s performance; common sense was telling me my car would adhere to the road better if my tires were wider. But what do I know, out of the garage and on to racing!
What MC3 DUB Edition lacks in places to race in, makes up for the content in each of the three available cities (San Diego, Atlanta and Detroit). The maps are huge, there are tons of races to do, mandatory for storyline and a whole bunch of optional races for money, plus tournaments and specific vehicle class races (ie: choppers only). There’s even a mini-goal to collect the Rockstar emblems to unlock some more extras.
Each race is a challenge. Other drivers can get aggressive towards you, and sometimes they’ll even pair up to try and squeeze you between them right from the start line. But to balance it all, they can also be really retarded sometimes, smashing themselves against passing vehicles or burning their nitrous just as a tram goes by and blocks their passage. The margin of error is small when driving at that kind of speed, and that makes it seem as if you were racing against other real players, and not computer-generated characters.
You also get stalked a lot by cops who not only can keep up with you, but they’re very smart and love to make your life difficult by ramming you in every direction possible while telling you to pull over and that “you’re only making this difficult”. They also like to organize strategically-placed road blocks. In sum, the AI is really good.
The better the car, the faster the experience. When I changed from my little yellow VW Jetta to the Chrysler 300 and upgraded it, my first races with it were a mess as I couldn’t control the car properly because of the speed. Then when I eventually bought the Viper, I was smashing myself against everything that moved and everything else that didn’t, kinda like a pinball game. It’s amazing how the vehicles handle differently, especially when it’s raining.
I’m so glad we don’t have to pay for damage repairs, or I’d be totally broke. It’s a good thing that there are no damage consequences and the vehicles only take visual damage, aside from at a certain point (shortly after you see smoke coming out of your hood) losing a few seconds for the vehicle to reset. This allows you to go completely crazy and smash other cars on purpose just to make it more difficult to whoever is trying to catch up to you.
Some of the crashes are really insane, yet fun to watch: cars flipping, motorcycles flying, their respective riders being tossed in the air like rag dolls, pile-ups of racers in narrow alleys, police cars smashing against everyone else at the finish line, the fun goes on and on.
After I got the hang of driving, using slipstream boosts and trying to make use of the hand break to my advantage, it was just awesome. Using the nitrous or the stream boost was making me sink back on my chair and the rest of the time I’d be clinging on the edge of the seat, leaning to the left or right according to where I had to turn.
Ok, that might sound pretty ridiculous, but place yourself in front of a 52″ high-definition projection screen and then come talk to me again. It’s intense, to say the least. Next I’ll be putting a fan in front of me so I can actually feel the breeze in my hair while driving my chopper around! Nah, I’m just kidding…
But it truly is an involving game.
Another pretty cool feature is the special moves your vehicles can get. Zone, Agro and Roar can help you get out of sticky situations when used at the right times, but not all vehicles have them and they have to be unlocked first (through career progression).
Zone lasts but a few seconds, but it slows down everything around you allowing you to take sharp turns or squeeze through narrow spaces safely. The Zone meter goes up by driving without crashing into things.
Agro is available to luxury sedans, SUV’s and trucks and basically lets you ram against everything in your way to make way for you. The meter goes up by hitting things (trees, street lights, other cars, etc.).
Roar is a move specific to muscle cars and choppers. What you do is create a sound wave with your engine that pushes everything out of the way in a close radius. Roar charges up as you make successful drifts.
Rockstar takes racing further in online compatibility so you can race against 7 other people. The new online features include:
- Chat feature (text in the PS2 version, voice in the Xbox version).
- Changing game settings without loosing the group of players.
- Online stats to keep track of your rankings.
- Host migration so that if the host quits the game can go on.
- Asynchronous join, which means anyone can join an active game or leave at any time.
- Buddy list (a brand new feature for the PS2) which allows you to join a game where your friends are already.
- Clubs (like Clans in Halo 2) with member hierarchy features.
There are 9 different race modes to play online, including Tag (where you ram into your opponents), Circuit, Frenzy (a checkpoint race against the clock), and even Capture the Flag (can you believe it, with cars? How cool is that?). It just keeps adding to the replay value.
I still turn my head to watch the TV commercial, although now I think to myself “It looks so much better on my Xbox and my big-screen TV.” MC3 is insanely fast and super-addictive. My aversion to racing games is now completely gone. Thank you Rockstar!
Special thanks to Chris Carro and Rockstar Games for providing me with a copy of the game.