There have been a plethora of racers released for the PSP in its short
lifetime, all of them portable versions of successful franchises. It’s not too
surprising then that Rockstar has now entered the race by bringing its
acclaimed Midnight Club series to the PSP with Midnight Club 3 DUB edition
(MC3). How does a game known for its wide-open cities and unpredictable
opponents do when squeezed down onto a little UMD disk? Well, that’s what I’m
here to let you know…
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| Racing down the streets of the city. |
MC3 is all about illegal street racing. Not the idiot driving down a
residential street at 70 MPH and dying when he hits a parked car kind that we
have in abundance here in LA, but rather the traffic dodging, shortcut
finding, nobody gets hurt type. The races take place in condensed versions of
San Diego, Atlanta, and Detroit, provide you with a series of checkpoints or
simply a destination, and challenge you to get to the finish line in your
customized car faster than your opponents can in their customized cars. The
racing is over-the-top pure arcade racing with crazy high speed turns, huge
jumps, and a bevy of shortcuts through locations such as shopping malls and an
aircraft carrier.
The heart and soul of MC3 is its career mode in which you play a newbie
nobody trying to become a somebody in the world of underground racing. You
begin by purchasing a small car and then hitting the streets in search of
races so that you can earn some much needed cash to upgrade and style your
ride. You then enter the game’s cruise mode in which the city is open to you
to explore. Pressing Start will bring up a map of the city marked with the
locations of the currently available races. Selecting a race will set its
location as a waypoint for you, making it easy to find your way as you drive
to the race site. You can also just drive around the city to check it out
without any time or race pressures to worry about. This may at first seem like
it would be interesting for all of a few minutes, but if you’re smart you’ll
use this mode to look for shortcuts and jumps to use while in the races. All
of the races take place on the streets of the city, so a good knowledge of the
lay of the streets and the secret shortcuts is a huge advantage. There are
also special icons hidden throughout the city and by collecting them you can
unlock additional mods for your car.
The races themselves fall into a few categories. There are challenges
against other street racers, car club races, city races, and special
tournaments. The first two of these need to be completed to advance your
career and unlock additional races and eventually the next city. City races
are an opportunity to pick up some extra cash to spend on your car while the
tournaments generally unlock bonus car mods when you win. The actual racing
remains the same across all of the categories, though, with the vast majority
of the races being checkpoint races, with a few lapped and dash races thrown
in for good measure.
Since you’re racing on city streets you’re never racing on a track and
you’re free to take whatever path you want so long as you reach the next
checkpoint on the list. Of course your competition will be doing the same
thing and races often begin with the racers all zipping down different streets
at the first intersection. This is what makes MC3’s races fun – they’re
unpredictable and the same race will play out differently every time. The
downside of this is that sometimes it will take you several runnings of a race
before you figure out the best path. And since the races always take place at
night it can even be hard sometimes to make out the turns when driving at full
speed, leading to missed checkpoints or full head-ons into buildings. Since
you need to come in first to clear a race some races will prove frustrating to
complete as you’ll have some trial and error learning the route and then
you’ll need to beat out the competition once you’ve figured that out.
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