I'll be honest about it; Midnight Club 3 on the Xbox is quite possibly my favorite arcade racer of all-time. It looks good, its got tons of replay value, excellent multiplayer modes and it made you want to keep playing it even after some particularly frustrating races later on. Yes, there were a few framerate issues here and there and the game simply boiled down to checkpoint racing, but I gave it a 9.1 and challenged anyone to find a better arcade racer. Now, a few months later, Rockstar gives us the PSP version of MC3: DUB Edition proving that the PSP is capable of massive environments, amazing graphics and RPG-length games. But does all this come with a hefty price attached to it as well? And will it overshadow everything that MC3 does so well?

Rockstar's Midnight Club 3 gives us an epic single player mode which should last the average gamer well over 20 hours to complete. And this is a racing game! You will be given three complete cities to race in where you'll take on challenges, win tournaments and beat rivals. In the process you will unlock various cars and car classes, choppers, SUV and some mind-blowing exotic rides. There are also some Rockstar icons hidden throughout the cities which will greatly rewards the keen gamer. And yes, there is the requisite car upgrade garage where you will be able to change everything on your car/bike to your heart's content. And while the game may require you to upgrade your car's performance to keep on wining races, it never requires you to change the look of your car just to satisfy a "style" rating like in other games do. A classy move by Rockstar.

If you've played MC3 on console, you know how massive this game is and I'm happy to report that the conversion to handheld is nothing short of amazing. Almost everything has been ported over; the wonderfully detailed cutscenes, the HUD, the entire environments and cities, the garage modes, the soundtrack, the various arcade modes, the multiplayer aspect, etc. MC3 will stun you from the start with its sheer size. But everything listed above comes with EXTREMELY long load times. You'll no doubt have heard about these and they have not been exaggerated. Anytime the game loads it takes forever. You switch cars in your garage; loading. You restart a race: loading. You change menus; loading. Having a game load is normal. Having it take upwards of a minute on a handheld (made to be played for short bursts of time) is unacceptable. Does it kill the game? Yes and no. Once loaded, you can wander around a city for as long as you like without further loading. When racing, there are no other load times until you finish or restart. But yes, the long load times will make or break this game for many and understandably so.

Thankfully, Midnight Club 3 handles well. The analog stick may be hard for many to use, but MC3 allows you to customize the directional buttons as you see fit. Using the D-pad makes the driving experience a lot more manageable. The arcade racing goodness is in full force here, complete with "special moves" like the slipstream turbo, in-air control, working hydraulics, burnouts, weight transfer, two wheel driving and a few neat tricks like agro. And yes, this is on a handheld. The only thing holding back the gameplay aspect of MC3 is that it feels overly slow compared to the console versions. Even with the faster cars, the sense of speed always seems off. This may be due to the proportions of vehicle versus environment or simply a the fact that a few graphical details that haven't been included. Still, the cars each drive differently and the upgrades performed on the engines really make a difference. Bikes are also included and are pretty fun to drive around too.