A few years ago, I had a considerable summer fling with a little game called Gran Turismo 3 where almost a hundred hours disappeared from under my nose, leaving me pale and malnourished as I headed back to school. Now I know comparing every racing game to GT3 is so two years ago, but this comparison actually has a point. See, I didn’t actually like the Turismo series, as I found out this year with the sequel. Simulation driving quickly borders on dull, and who has time to really get under the hood with all those miniscule tweaks? The thing that really enamored me was the selection of beautiful, expensive cars that I could even purchase in baby blue colors, and as a liberal arts student, I had to deal with the fact that driving a virtual Aston Martin would probably be the closest I’d ever get to touching a luxury car without working as a valet at a law firm. Sure they weren’t really that fun to drive, but I could stare at my imaginary garage with a sense of well-earned pride.

Flash forward to the modern day, and Rockstar has created the third game in the Midnight Club series—this time with the editorial input of DUB Magazine—and the result is aimed right at consumers like me. As old as the system itself, the illegal street racing franchise has gone through several awkward incarnations as Rockstar’s redheaded stepchild, receiving generally positive press but nothing along the lines of a mainstream breakthrough like Grand Theft Auto. Perhaps that will change with Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, or at least it certainly should. With a bevy of cool cars that can be tweaked for both visuals and performance, gameplay that remains fast and dangerous while retaining a surprising amount of control and a presentation that’s almost too slick, Midnight Club 3 provides a level of detail and purpose that has long been missing from the arcade racing genre.

The game opens with one of the best looking menus in recent memory, set up like the opening credits for a twitchy summer blockbuster, before new players are introduced to the owner of Six One Nine Customs in a realistic-looking cutscene. As you pick your first ride and begin to make some introductory changes to it, adding things like new brakes, neon lighting underneath and maybe a new engine, it soon becomes clear that Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition is something immersive and unprecedented. By placing almost equal depth on changing the appearance of your car or motorcycle, be it through decals, new rims, badges, lighting or even hydraulics, the game addresses exactly the kind of fantasy world I always wanted and only partially found in Gran Turismo 3. Of course, some of this borders on “ricer” fantasy, as many decorations quickly get out of hand in hideous, garish combinations, and nothing tried to stop me from placing a big ole’ Mercedes Benz decal on the front of my Mitsubishi Eclipse. But hey, isn’t that half the fun in the first place?

Since I run the risk of babbling on and on about the customization options and selection of impressive cars that can be perfected in traditional Pimp My Ride style, the attention now turns to the racing itself. After all, what’s the use of a great car if the game makes driving nothing short of frustrating? Thankfully, Midnight Club 3 marks a further progression towards arcade perfection. While the second game started to implement a character-driven storyline, the idea wasn’t fully realized until now, where your character sets out on a mission to earn the street’s respect. To do so, you’ll have to challenge individuals to get access to their exclusive car clubs, where winning will reveal new gameplay techniques to make racing all the more easier. Tuners, for example, can learn “Zone”, where a click of the left analog stick slows down time for around five seconds, allowing precise turning. Winning in the luxury cars category gets your more expensive rides the ability to perform “Aggro” with a click of the left analog stick, where they turn into indestructible plows of everything in their path. You can also participate in tournaments, which award you a new car and cash prizes, as well as the cash-only non-mandatory street races. All the money will be needed to continue upgrading your vehicles, since faster cars and unlocked techniques become necessary to win in later races as the competition gets more intelligent and the courses get more detailed.

Speaking of the courses, you start out in a large and intricate section of San Diego before moving around the country to other racing hotspots like Detroit and Atlanta, all of which look equally as impressive. The formerly scattershot world tour has been cancelled in favor of more realistic urban settings, perhaps due to DUB’s input, and I prefer this new approach. Actual races take place across around a dozen paths through the city, so after a few hours some of the pre-determined tracks will start to look awfully familiar. That’s about the time the game begins to offer mirrored courses in an attempt to shake things up a little. I have no qualms with the control or racing itself; Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition hits impressive speeds and the arcade sensibilities allow even lower-class cars to hit tight turns so long as the player knows what they are doing. There’s not much of a learning curve, and any “secrets” that do exist (such as the importance of peeling out to start a race) are divulged intermittently by the owner of Six One Nine Customs. In fact, I dare say this is one of the tightest, best racing games I have ever set hands on.

There are only a few issues I hold against the game, most of which are minor annoyances that build to become more irritating as you spend more time racing. The first is the occasionally sloppy handling of the course arrows, which guide drivers in the direction of the next arrow until they ultimately reach the finish point. You are expected to pass either under or very near the arrows to continue the race, so that all drivers stay on a similar pathway. The problem is that sometimes you can cut a corner near an arrow and the game realizes you are in the general area and counts it for you… but sometimes it doesn’t. When this happens, you’ll have to restart the race since all the competitors will continue forward while you are forced to backtrack and hit the arrow you already passed once. My other gameplay issue concerns the police, whose beefed up presence provides a serious nuisance to players. It can be hard to escape them once they are on your trail, and they tend to pick on human drivers much more often than their fellow computers. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you!

But that’s really all I can think of taking issue with, and in a game of this size, that’s quite the compliment to the maturing Midnight Club franchise. If they continue this progress, I could see the series becoming another major critically acclaimed flagship for the publisher. A big reason for that is the presentation, which for a lack of a better adjective can only be described as “cool”. The realistically constructed cities, the gleaming cars zooming by at smooth framerates and the detailed weather effects push the limits of what the PlayStation 2 can do graphically.

But even more impressive is the collection of licensed music tracks, which includes a daunting number of tunes from hip hop, dancehall, rock and techno genres. Think of just about every rap hit of the past few months and it’s in here. Kanye West, Twista, Fat Joe, The Game, 50 Cent, T.I. and Fabolous all contribute at least one track, usually two or three, and then there’s the solid addition of the south (HOUSTON SO REAL) with the likes of Lil’ Wayne, Slim Thug and New Orleans’ finest, the Big Tymers. Not into rap? Midnight Club 3 also boasts my favorite lady, M.I.A., Beenie Man, Queens of the Stone Age, Kasabian and more. The only genre I don’t care for is the techno, which is why it’s a shame that the game forces you to either listen to all the tracks or select a genre to listen to; there is no individual selecting of a personal soundtrack. That can be annoying, but still, when you’ve played three hours and you’re still hearing new music, that’s quite a feat.

The game retains many of the multiplayer options in Midnight Club 2, including both online and offline options. Even with the different modes given to shake things up, I feel Midnight Club 3 loses some of its charm when isolated from the stylized presentation and focus on customization in Career Mode. Sure, you can tweak your car before racing against a friend, but it just doesn’t feel the same. Gamers can play inside the single player world for endless amounts of time, thankfully; even after defeating all the challenges, there are still street races and cars left to be bought and fully customized. You’ll find plenty to do in this one.

Sometimes on cold dreary nights when I sit in my basement alone, I contemplate just how remarkable the institution of Rockstar Games has become. I don’t mean to turn this some creepy praise bordering on fetishism, but the way they’ve managed to hire some of the best talent in the business programming-wise and still retain a surprisingly hip and completely un-geek persona when creating their projects is something that I see more companies trying to adopt in the future. This is part of Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition’s charm: not that it’s just a good racing game, because any developer with the right people and enough time can create something that handles well; it’s those extra moments when the race is about to start and “Fire Fire” starts playing as the camera swoops around the cars like the opening to some high-testosterone racing movie possibly starring Sylvester Stallone. Like I said earlier, it’s almost impossible to play this game without thinking of “cool”, and Rockstar has proven to be a major force in the fight to make that adjective and the world of videogames no longer opposing forces. Midnight Club 2 certainly wasn’t that hip, and often had the weird vibe of an uncle who tries too hard to show how in tune with pop culture they are. With this game, the presentation and style seem to flow naturally, and that makes all the difference in defining Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition as a must-own title.