Project Gotham Racing is the unofficial sequel to Metropolis Street Racer from the Dreamcast, and although it’s been a few months since it’s release I’d like to give you guys a second opinion. Project Gotham Racing is all about street racing and earning Kudos through stylish moves such as power slides, making small jumps and driving on 2 wheels etc. Your aim in the game is to become the world’s top professional street racer by racing all over the world - London, Tokyo, SanFrancisco and New York.

Gameplay:
The gameplay in PGR is just right, it makes you want to come back and play the game again and again just to progress that little bit further, at times this can offer a buzz which is what a game should offer to the player. Each car in the game handles in it’s own individual way meaning you can develop a taste for which car will be your favourite to drive quite easily. With 29 cars in total in the game ranging from the MINI Cooper S to the Ferrari F50. There are 100’s of tracks to choose from all based in London, Tokyo, SanFrancisco and New York and are very accurately detailed to their real life counterparts.
PGR at first only offers you 5 modes of play, but then other modes such as medal pursuit become available after progressing slightly in the game. Only the beginner levels are available at first in each game mode but as you progress more tracks, cars and modes become available to you, which is a good point to the game as it gives you a reward each time you do well in the game this pushes you to carry on playing the game. Just because it’s a racing game doesn’t mean you go round a track a set amount of times, in the Kudos Challenge mode you are required to race one on one, race against the clock or try an overtaking challenge, the game goes beyond what you would normally expect.
As far as the Kudos system works this time round the kudos is ‘banked’ every few seconds after you pull off a power slide or a jump say and can turn into a combo if 2 or 3 tricks are pulled off in a row, but if you crash you end up losing it all. It’s a unique system and works well with the games environment although it can be annoying once you’ve worked up a large amount of Kudos only to lose it by nudging against a barrier. The AI in the game is quite intelligent surprisingly, as computer controlled cars will end up doing whatever it takes to stop you winning the race and I do mean anything! But looking on the other side of things the computer controlled cars will sometimes crash and make mistakes sometimes so the game seems realistic and fair at the same time, offering single player games great challenges.

Graphics:
The Xbox GPU has been put to good use here with spectacular city detail as you can easily recognise shops and places from London that you might have visited, even small items such as park benches and trees. One feature that is useful from PGR that MSR didn’t have is the draw distance, beforehand seeing corners from a distance wasn’t possible even in plain daylight on some tracks in MSR; PGR has an incredible draw distance meaning navigating your way around the track is a simple as it should be in real life. The cars have also been highly detailed too with even the smallest parts such as air vents and small parts of lights viewable. Overall the graphics have impressed me greatly in comparison to other games on the Xbox. Other effects like reflective car surfaces and the like are in the game which makes the game so lifelike, the graphical standard isn’t at lifelike yet but it’s getting very close!

Sound:
PGR has been given an extensive library of music to play whilst you drive on the streets of the world. There are many genres including dance, heavy metal and R&B to name a couple. Along with the huge original soundtrack there’s the ability to add your own soundtracks from your Xbox hard drive (which is a must for most Xbox games). So the sound of PGR has been well thought out, although organising your music can be frustrating with the ability to move music tracks from a to b made more difficult than it should be. Not only is there a great range but also it is all great driving music even bands such as Gorillaz, Scapegoat Wax and Chemical Brothers are included in the soundtrack.

Longevity:
PGR is a street racing game and bearing that in mind you wouldn’t expect the game to take that long to finish. But PGR is different, the game runs off the idea that the further you progress in the game the more things you unlock, items such as time trial tracks, medal pursuit mode and new cars are just a couple of examples of what’s to be unlocked. One again the idea of rewarding the gamer for progressing has paid off well for Bizarre Creations and has added to the longetivity as well as gameplay. The multiplayer mode allows four way split screen and is great to play, the fact that you are street racing around the top cities in the world with your mates is quite cool to do. The game will last even the most hardcore of gamers for a couple of months at least to unlock everything.

Round Up:
Overall PGR has given the racing fans on Xbox what they wanted – a visually stunning and strong in gameplay racing game that will offer a long-term challenge without the usual GT ‘buy, tune and race’ style game. PGR offers so much through such simple concepts; PGR was the best racing game for Xbox at time of launch and still is quite a marvel of a racing game today worth your £40.

Pros:

• Highly detailed tracks and cars
  
• Easy to get into but hard to master
  
• So many extras to unlock
  
• Large original soundtrack along with the ability to add your own soundtracks
  

  Cons:
  

  • More cars would be nice
    
  • Frame rate drops every so slightly at one or two points in the game