The Project Gotham Racing (PGR) series has been going strong since the original debuted on the Xbox console some years ago. Bizarre Creations however, have had similar previous experience with their late racer on the Sega Dreamcast, Metropolis Street Racer. PGR can easily be considered a continuation of that franchise. Every Gotham game has had a distinct meaning around its release, the second game pretty much pioneered the Xbox Live service when it first launched. PGR 3 launched side by side with the Xbox 360 console in late 2005, to great success and was easily one of the must have launch titles on the console. Now we have Project Gotham Racing 4, which has no attachment to pioneering any hardware or service, meaning that developer, Bizarre Creations and gamers alike can focus on several facts, simply put, this is the most polished, finely tuned, content packed and enjoyable racer available today.

Gameplay:

Liverpool developer Bizarre Creations have taken a big risk with this fourth instalment in the Project Gotham Racing series as for the first time ever they have introduced bikes, which can race along side the many impressive cars featured in the game. Balancing between the two vehicles classes is bound to cause some complications, although they appear to have handled it rather well, but it’s not perfect. The moment you’re off the starting line you’ll notice that bikes typically speed ahead of the more heavier cars in the game from the moment the race starts. The bikes basically accelerate very quickly while the cars take a second or two to pick up any sort of formidable speed; although the higher class cars do have a higher top speed than the bikes in the game. It seems though, that if you get used to handling the bikes early on it shouldn’t be much of a challenge to keep that lead against the cars on the race track. My problem with the bikes though isn’t so much the handling but the weight; it’s difficult to tackle any sort of corner when racing a bike at high speed. You need to brake or slow down far too early for my liking, and if you don’t, then you’ll find that you have just slammed into the corner and launched off your bike. This is where the problem is for me, the bikes feel far too heavy, I think you should have be able to brake or slow down a little later and make the corner with ease but this is not the case. Tackling a corner with the bikes in PGR 4 feels more like driving a large lorry around a corner. I suppose though that this is the developers attempt to balance the bikes against the cars, it however just feels very unnatural. The bikes do actually control very well in the game (aside from the cornering). You can taunt your competitors or pull off some rather limited wacky tricks with the use of the B button and of course you can pull back on the left analogue stick ever so slightly and perform those daring wheelies too. Weather now plays a massive role in Project Gotham Racing 4, meaning that you could be tackling heavy fog, rain, snow or perhaps a nice sunny day instead. These weather effects appear to look insanely incredible but what is more impressive is the way that they effect vehicle handling and can sometime force you to adjust your playing style on the fly, as the weather can change from a calm day to heavy rain, mid race, sometimes with some impressive lightning for good measure. If it’s pouring down with rain then you may notice some annoying puddles on the track and these seem to be placed about the time that you may expect to be braking to tackle an upcoming corner, which isn’t going to bode so well in these conditions. Heavy fog can offer a challenge if racing on an unfamiliar track as you are unable to see what corners lie ahead, this can either be tackled by slamming on the brakes rather late or keeping an eye on the mini map in your HUD. PGR 4’s main menu attempts to offer up some compelling graphical flair in the background but in doing so it appears very cumbersome to access what you want, at least compared to the more organised menu system of PGR 3. Most of the time will undoubtedly be spent with the Gotham Career mode. The goal within Gotham Career, as with all racing games is to be the best you can be and ultimately be #1 in the world (at least in the game's world). When starting out in Gotham Career, you get to choose whether you want to race as a male or female driver and it is here where you have some light customisation options available. You can alter the clothing to be more bike or car racing appropriate and can manipulate the colouring and style of the racer’s clothing and helmet, as well as the vehicle too. Once you accelerate yourself into Gotham Career, it offers similar gaming scenarios to the previous game in that the majority of the time you will be street racing as per usual, and various other modes which Gotham fans will be accustomed to by now, such as cone challenges, speed tests, elimination races and special invitational races, where if the latter is won you get to own a new vehicle without having to break into your Kudos balance. The other modes of play include Arcade, Time Attack and Custom Match. These are pretty much self explanatory. Arcade offers up 10 chapters for you to test your mettle against, with a different mixture of playable events. Time Attack revolves around being the quickest at finishing the race, so no time wasting with fancy moves to earn Kudos. In Time Attack there is no Kudos and neither is there any competition to distract or get in the way. What is more intriguing is that you can upload your ghost data to PGR On Demand, so your friends and other gamers can compete against your best lap times. Custom Match offers up the Street Race and Elimination modes, from here you are able to choose the city, route, number of laps and more importantly, those oh so important weather effects. Is today, foggy, raining, snowing or sunny? You decide. Project Gotham Racing 4 also offers up a whole host of game modes for online play, the Ranked matches can just throw you in the varying game modes at random. The other choices for Ranked matches include the ability to play in single and team ranked events. The unofficial and user created Cat & Mouse from PGR 2 returns to form in PGR 4, so break out the Mini Cooper’s and prepare to either get pushed over the finish line or get totally owned and rammed off the road by several beastly vehicles. Earning Kudos in races gets added to your overall accumulated Kudos balance, which can be spent on a whole host of items in the PGR Shop. The most expensive and ‘bizarre’ item would have to be a PGR 4 gamer picture, which costs one million of your hard earned Kudos balance - its OK though, because you unlock an achievement for buying it too… Annoyingly, Kudos sometimes has a limit for racing. I assume this is to perhaps push the player away from the easier difficulty setting. If you hit the max limit of Kudos then you should probably jump the difficulty up anyway. Although you can be rewarded nicely depending on your final position at the end of the race, earning bonus Kudos points to add to that which was earned in the race. Difficulty seems to be more complex than PGR 3 though, off the bat it’s hard to find the right balance. Normal just seems a little too difficult for the most part, so then we jump down to the Easy difficulty, it’s then far too easy to just dominate in everything. This may come down to the player’s skill, Normal is certainly not overly difficult, it just offers up a good challenge more than usual. PGR 3 may have started the ball rolling but it certainly isn’t leading in terms of functionality and ease of use with Bizarre Creations patented PGR On Demand service in Gotham 4. It does work well, however it’s not as easy and convenient to use as other games which offer similar features. For some reason a non- racing game springs to mind, Halo 3, I’d like to be able to view my replays back and freely move the photo camera around with out it having to be paused and switching between playing the replay and the photo mode. The replays and photos that you save can be uploaded to the PGR On Demand service, but only at the moment that you originally take a screenshot. It is some what annoying that you do not have the option to upload these in-game photos if going back and viewing a previously saved screenshot, the option for uploading to PGR On Demand is just not present on previously saved screenshots. I expect many gamers will find this frustrating and hopefully Bizarre Creations will act promptly and help to make their PGR On Demand service a little bit more user friendly, by releasing an auto-update via. Xbox Live. However, viewing your saved replays enables you to take the screenshots in the first place, which then gives you the choice to take a screenshot and take advantage of that one opportunity to upload your masterpiece to the PGR On Demand service, and view them on PGRNations.com, this is where you can find and download your masterpieces to your computer. Games that allow you to take screenshots and upload them to the Internet are few and far between; this feature is so welcoming and enables the gamer further customisation options, at least for their desktop wallpaper on the computer or even to set your own favourite in-game image as the background of your Xbox 360 consoles menu. Now, if only Microsoft will finally give us the ability to set a different background image for each of the Xbox 360’s blades…

Graphics:

Visually PGR4 is the best looking racer on the console, what’s more impressive than the vehicles is the locations and those oh so lovely dynamic weather effects. The crowd look realistic enough and certainly move more convincingly than the cardboard cut out looking crowds from the previous games. One of the things I loved about PGR 3 was the introduction of the in-car viewpoint, this of course is in PGR 4 too, but now our windshield wipers work too! As soon as a light drizzle kicks in or some snow, then those windshield wipers get to work, I personally prefer racing in this view point and I think it makes it a little bit more challenging too. I also like how when in this viewpoint, the sound effects echo and the music still plays as normal, which is suggestive that it’s playing on the radio while all the other noise is external from the car. It’s just one of those things that not everyone will pick up on but it’s certainly a nice touch. PGR 4 is very likely the most realistic racer… actually, no, it is the most realistic looking game, period. The weather effects obviously play a big role in this too, as they do look rather stunning. Most impressive of them all has to be the rain and the way that the tarmac shines and reflects all the lights from some of the more vividly coloured cities, such as Las Vegas or Tokyo. The one thing that breaks the realistic factor ever so slightly are the damn trees. Come on guys, go hire some tree modeler’s or something or just don’t have any trees in the game. It’s like driving along the motorway and looking at the white lines on the road, they’re all the same. It’s not quite as bad as in PGR 3 though, there seems to be one or two different trees now, but it’s just not good enough and is the only thing that breaks the realism factor. If I visit any of these places featured in PGR 4 and I see the same tree over and over, then I will literally slap myself.

Sound:

Racing games always and maybe forever will suffer in the music department, at least seeing as many of us have very different acquired tastes. PGR 4 actually does break the trend somewhat, as it has some very good music, albeit very limited good music. Though I’m sure it has something for everyone and of course, something that everyone despises too. PGR 4 has a variety of different music genres on offer, from the likes of rock music to some rather bizarre and very unfitting jazz music, the latter of which does not seem appropriate for a racing game – unless everyone is driving Mini Cooper’s in first gear on Nurburgring on ice! Play your own music, that’s right, Microsoft’s Custom Soundtracks feature can be utilized once again; we here at MSXbox-World predict that this feature gets whored out the most in the racing genre of gaming. I have always been a big fan of the PGR series, more so since PGR 2 was quite possibly the first game that got me hooked on Xbox Live multiplayer. However, after playing Turn 10’s Forza Motorsport 2, that game has one thing I love over PGR 4, engine sounds. In comparison, PGR’s engine noises sound some what rather flat and lacking that “phwoar” factor, which Forza Motosport 2 provides.

Longevity:

There’s always room for more racers, the Xbox 360 is the host to some of the finest racing games available and also some terrible ones feature on the console too. PGR 4 falls into the ‘more finer’ category and tops the list as my favourite racer. While it may not have the depth of customisation that Forza Motorsport 2 has, PGR 4 speeds past the competition with its insanely realistic visuals and balancing of arcade and simulation gameplay, which makes it all the more enjoyable to play. Gotham Career will keep gamers going for a good while, especially with the added difficulty of the Hardcore setting. An arcade game can also be found in some of PGR 4’s garages, Geometry Wars: Waves, this game alone is certainly addictive on its own merits, I just hate that when exiting Geometry Wars that it re-launches PGR 4 instead of returning you to the garage. The fact that it’s there in the first place though is good enough for me.

Overall:

There is literally a ton of excellent titles recently released as well as on the horizon over the coming couple of months. Hopefully PGR 4 doesn’t get over shadowed with all these other compelling titles due; it certainly won’t be over shadowed by any other racing game. If you like racing games, then Project Gotham Racing 4 is one that you have to buy. A demo of PGR 4 has recently sped onto the Xbox Live Marketplace too and is certainly worth a test drive as it is quite a feature packed demo in its own right.