Project Gotham is a stunning game. No introduction, no messing around building a framework from which to relate back to and reference later on in the text. Just simple acclaim is all you'll hear from me about this title from UK based developer Bizarre Creations. A demi-sequel-cum-addon to the Equally well received Dreamcast game Metropolis Street Racer, Project Gotham draws you into the game at a very early stage and will keep you under its spell for a very long time. The main difference between this and all other car-based games is that this is one of the very few that actually focuses on driving and not just racing. Confused? Thought they were one and the same? Well, Bizarre Creations have approached the genre from a completely different angle than everyone else and have emerged with a formula that is so simple I'm left wondering why nobody else has thought of it earlier. But maybe that's a good thing; because it's doubtful anyone else could have pulled it off so well.

Normally with a driving game, your objective is to finish first and accrue points over a series of races thus unlocking new cars to drive and set new lap times with. Project Gotham on the other hand gives you races but you have to bet on how well you'll do in the race. So in essence you're racing against the AI cars and yourself at the same time, after all you've just bet that you're going to come first in a race to give you a thousand kudos points to get the gold medal on the challenge. Kudos points, you say? Ah yes, here's the innovation; the game judges you on how well you drive and rewards you worth kudos points. For instance, pull off a perfectly controlled power slide around a hairpin and you'll rack up some kudos points. Overtake someone while you do it and you'll get some more lumped in and a combo score too. You're not safe for a few seconds after each set kudos point you have amassed and you must make sure you don't lose control and hit a wall as all those hard earned points will disappear. You have to 'bank' them by steering clear of trouble. So it's kind of like a car-based RPG/Tony Hawks/Weakest Link game. Sort of. Who cares though, because it's just sublime. There are tons of cars to unlock along your career either by completing a set of challenges, getting a certain kudos points total, playing for a pre-defined amount of time etc... There's just so many ways to unlock goodies that you'll have to try everything in order to get everything.

The graphics are superb, each city (London, Tokyo, San Francisco and New York) is accurately rendered down to the last paving slab with thousands upon thousands of photos used to recreate the real thing on X-Box and it all moves along so smoothly that you're wondering how on earth they have managed to do it. The anti-aliasing problems that were so apparent on the Dreamcast version, making it hard to see corners until you were entering them has been thankfully smoothed out. This wasn't a programming fault anyway, just due to the hardware limitations of our long lost friend from Sega. Just look out for the beautiful reflections of the afternoon sun on the tarmac, it's just lovely. The sound compliments the graphics perfectly with each car having their own distinctive and authentic engine purr. Sound reflection is present and incredibly realistic, as you are driving past a building the noise is very tight and close making you very aware of your surroundings and making you feel a touch claustrophobic so that when you go past a gap in the buildings, the sound opens up and drifts off into the distance. You probably won't even notice it unless you listen for it but when you do I'm sure you'll be suitably impressed.

Equal amounts of detail have been worked on with the graphics, sound and physics and it really does show. It very much feels like you are playing something that people wanted to make for themselves and not just a company churning out sequel after sequel of updated dross. Games like these just remind you why you got into playing games in the first place, it's an absolute dream to play and it is obvious that it has been crafted with love and careful attention to detail that is fast becoming rare. It's not all perfect, the multiplayer framerate does suffer a touch now and then when four people are screaming round the tracks and some of the textures on buildings are a little bland but it's not important when everything else is so perfect. The best feature about Project Gotham is that it ultimately pits you against your perfect nemesis: yourself. You decide how quick you think you will do a lap of a circuit, how many kudos points you can earn in two laps of a circuit and the only person to blame if you fail is you. Get used to yourself, you'll be your own worst enemy before long.