Midnight Club 3 Review: Looks great but 1 minute load times!!

Finally, a PSP game that is living up to all my expectations. If this is any indication of what the new GTA game for the PSP will look like (and it should, both made by the same company) then I will be very happy indeed. It has real songs for sound tracks and the graphics are beautiful, every bit as good as the PS2, and there's just so many cars and options for each of the cars it's quite impressive they were able to pack so much into something so small.

You start off with buying your car, then you can customize it and start racing. I recommend the Dodge SRT4, it's quick and will allow you to easily win early races without hassle. You can modify every portion of every car on this game, adding turbos, performance chips, tires, shocks, nitrous, body kits... everything aspect of the car. Nice thing about this game is it actually tells you what the modification you're adding does for the car so you will end up learning a little bit about cars while you're playing. One disappointment is it doesn't really tell you if the changes you've made will make the car have a faster quarter, 0-60, etc, it just has "acceleration" and a score beneath it showing that your acceleration has improved. I really wish there was a quarter mile track I could take the car to and see how it does like on Gran Turismo.

One ability I like on tuner class vehicles (basically anything not old school or luxury, the Dodge SRT4 is a good example) have a "slow motion" feature that allows you to press a button and everything moves in slow motion for a few seconds. It allows you to make turns and and weave in and out of traffic that might have resulted in an accident. You have to "build up" this ability by not getting in an accident while driving, there will be a power meter on the left side that grows while you drive and once it gets full you receive one "block" of slow motion. Not sure how many you can get but it looks like several. You earn this ability after a few races but it certainly helps.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack is awesome. If you like street racing or you've played other street racing games like "Need For Speed: Underground" then you have a good idea what the soundtrack is like. Here's a full list of songs I found listed online:

7L & Esoteric featuring Celph - "Murder-Death-Kill"
Apathy - "Drive It Like I Stole It"
Aquasky - "Spectre"
Ash - "Meltdown"
Aztec Mystic - "Aguila"
B. Calloway - "Direct Maniac"
Baby A.K.A. Birdman featuring Lil' Wayne - "Shyne On"
Beenie Man - "Miss L.A.P."
Beenie Man featuring Ms. Thing - "Dude"
Beenie Man featuring So Solid Crew - "Yagga Yo"
Big Tymers featuring Lac, Stone, Mikkey - "Put That S**t Up"
Buddy Klein - "Let's Go"
Bump J - "On The Run"
Calyx - "Get Myself To You"
Calyx - "Illusions"
Calyx - "Just You"
Calyx - "The Leader"
Calyx - "Are You Ready"
Calyx - "Chasing Shadows"
Calyx - "Collision Course"
Calyx & Ill Skillz - "Thru Your Eyes"
Culture Shock - "Vega"
Dark Energy - "Sunshine"
D-Block - "I Dare You"
Deep Blue - "The Helicopter Tune"
Dom & Keaton - "Archaeon"
Dom & Roland - "Imagination VIP"
Dom & Roland - "Soundwall VIP"
Beenie Man - "King Of The Dancehall"
Big Tymers - "Get Your Roll On"
E-Sassin - "Interface"
Fabolous - "Gangsta"
Fabolous - "Keepin' It Gangsta"
Fabolous - "Real Talk (123)"
Fabolous featuring Thara - "Ghetto"
Fat Joe - "Safe 2 Say (The Incredible)"
Fix - "Flash"
Fix - "Bite Before You Bark"
Future Prophecies - "Final Fantasy"
Hundred Reasons - "Stories With Unhappy Endings"
Idlewild - "A Modern Way Of Letting Go"
Jean Grae - "Going Crazy"
Jean Grae - "Hater's Anthem"
Jean Grae - "You Don't Want It"
Jimmy Eat World - "Pain"
Kasabian - "Club Foot"
Knights Of The Jaguar - "Jaguar"
Lady Saw - "Strip Tease"
Lil' Wayne - "Go D.J."
Los Hermanos - "Quetzal"
M. Pizzini, R. Ousley. - "Westside Switching"
M.I.A. - "Denang"
M.I.A. - "Fire Fire"
Mannie Fresh - "Real Big"
Marilyn Manson - "Rock Is Dead"
Nine Inch Nails - "The Hand That Feeds"
Mash Out Posse - "Robbin' Hoodz"
Mr. De' - "The Zoo"
Mr. De' - "Throw"
Mr. Vegas featuring Wayne Anthony - "Pull Up"
Noisia - "Believe"
Noisia - "Cold Veins"
Omni Trio - "Renegade Snares"
Outerspace - "151"
Peaches featuring Iggy Pop - "Kick It"
Petey Pablo - "Freek-A-Leek"
Pilot To Gunner - "Barrio Superstarrio"
Pitbull featuring Piccallo - "Dammit Man"
Queens Of The Stone Age - "Little Sister"
Roy Jones, Jr. featuring Magic & Choppa - "Body Head Anthem"
Sean Paul - "Like Glue"
Slim Thug - "Like A Boss"
Suburban Knight - "Night Strike"
Suburban Knight - "Nocturbulous"
Suburban Knight - "The Warning"
Supernatural featuring Wildchild of the Lootpack - "Victory"
T.I. - "U Don't Know Me"
T.I. - "ASAP"
Tek Brothers - "Funktion"
The Explosion - "No Revolution"
The Game featuring 50 Cent - "How We Do"
The Martian - "Lost Transmission"
The Martian - "Sex In Zero Gravity"
The Martian - "Share Your Feelings"
The Martian - "Stardancer"
The Ratt Pakk - "Flight Deck"
The Ratt Pakk - "Cornbread"
The Ratt Pakk - "Deep South"
The Ratt Pakk - "Disco 2001"
The Ratt Pakk - "Epish"
The Ratt Pakk - "Spaced Out"
Trick Daddy featuring Khia & Tampa Tony - "Jump On It"
Twista - "Overnight Celebrity"
Twista featuring Anthony Hamilton - "Sunshine"
Twista featuring T.I. & Liffy Stokes - "Like A 24"
Two Culture Clash featuring General Degree - "…And Dance"
Two Culture Clash featuring Ward 21 - "This Anuh Rampin'"
Underground Resistance - "Hi-Tech Jazz"
Underground Resistance - "Jupiter Jazz"
Underground Resistance - "Amazon"
Unwritten Law - "F.I.G.H.T."
Uptight Sound System - "Righteous Dub"
Ying Yang Twins - "Hanh!"

Now that looks like a lot (103 songs) and you might be wondering "how did they fit all that and the game on one 1.8gB disc?". Remember the PSP has a VME (Virtual Mobile Engine) developed by Sony for use in its portable MD and MP3 players that allows sounds to be processed with less energy consumption compared with traditional DSPs (digital sound processors). The VME is capable of playing MP3, AAC, and ATRAC3-format, and with compression it wouldn't be difficult to fit all those songs in less than 300 mB: 103 x ~3 minutes each = 309. MP3 is typically 1mB per minute, AAC and ATRAC3 are typically smaller while providing similar sound quality.

More Review Sources

There's just so much to this game it's hard to describe it all, for a more indepth review I suggest you go here:
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/925777.asp
they list over a dozen professional reviews of the game each with pictures and some with videos. I'll be updating this review while I play the game, perhaps by end of the game I will have a finished review.

Load Times

Now my biggest complaint... and it's a big one... is the load times. We're not talking 15 seconds people, I'm talking 60 to 90 second load times. No, I didn't accidentally add a zero, the load time between races really does take a minute or longer, and some of these races are against the clock on a track and don't even take a minute to race around, meaning you're going to spend more time looking at a loading screen than playing the game! And there's nothing to do while waiting for it to load, it's not like Ridge Racer and it's minigame available while first starting which wasn't really needed since the game only takes a few seconds to start anyway, you just sit there staring at a boring loading screen, listening to the UMD disc grind away.

These long load times have become a major concern to me because it really kills playability and most professional reviews never mention loading times between game sequences. Maybe it's because they're usually only a few seconds, but at a minute or longer I would hope that would become something covered in the review.

I really don't understand why the long loading times are necessary since the PSP's hardware is identical to the ps2 and developers have learned how to deliver fast load times on the ps2 so what's the reason? Please don't tell me battery life, I would gladly sacrifice 50% of the battery life for a 50% decrease in loading times. If it is battery life then developers should see if they can add an option to the game menus to sacrifice battery life for faster load times (power save option).

Fortunately once you get further in the game you don't win races the first time around so the loading times won't be such a problem since it's just reloading what's already in memory, but for the first few hours of gameplay you'll spend more time looking at the loading screen than playing.

Besides the incredible long loading times the game looks great, but if you're impatient I'd skip this game.

UPDATED July 7th