Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition

Now that the bulk of import-tuners have come and more or less gone, Rockstar, with its third iteration in the Midnight Club series, has tackled what is arguably the most stylistic and well-rounded arcade racer of the bunch. Developed in San Diego where the tuner scene is highly visible even to the ignorant, Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is rooted deep in the mod subculture and never gives up faith or sells out to commercialism. The intertwined message of stellar gameplay and entrenched culture gives the game a feeling of authenticity sorely lacking in similar racers.

Rockstar aims the third game in its series away from the relative cheesiness of Midnight Club 2 with its goofy characters, unlicensed cars, and limited customization. The studio has added a mid-sized customization system to the mix, brings in more than 50 fully licensed trucks, SUVs, tuners, exotics, muscle cars, and motorcycles (all of which take heavy damage, mind you), and brings to the game a sizeable and compelling online component. Best of all, there are real reasons to explore the vast trio of cities and effective (if not arcadey) super powers that add a whole new layer of strategy to the racing itself. And while MC3 isn't the fastest, or prettiest racer around (it's just a hair short on both ends), it's incredibly stylistic, long-lasting, and deep.

MC3 is at once the same beast that MC2 was, yet far deeper, broader, and richer in presentation and culture. An arcade game by nature, it builds its core gameplay around intensity. Compared to MC2, the city streets are wider with more traffic, the maps are entirely different, there is more action occurring onscreen, and the nature of the races has altered ever so slightly thanks to the variety of licensed cars and addition of power-ups. Strangely, the rail-branching element that was so distinctive in the previous iteration still exists, but is no longer the primary aspect. Now, along with the un-ordered races (the dominant kind in MC2), the inclusion of point-to-point and time-based contests adds depth and variety a previously straightforward race. Running at a usually-solid 30 FPS, the game appears to blaze along faster when saddled on motorcycles, engaged in slipstream mode, or simply by changing to the first-person perspective and there are five perspectives in all.