Notes: Holy Crapsiath, That's a lot of writing. I hope that at 4,500 words it won't be ignored by everyone, but that's a vain hope at best. Anyway, this was a heap of fun to put together, and it's nice to be back into writing it after so long. Please leave any comments or advice you may have, as I'm always looking to write better and this took a very long time to do so I'd like at least a little feedback on it.
The Project Gotham Racing Series
Since it's release in November 2001, Bizzare Creations' Project Gotham Racing series has been the Xbox's flagship racing title. It's formula of letting players get behind the wheel of the some of the world's most desirable production cars and then race them in beautiful real world cities is a simple one, but across the series' four renditions, Bizzare has sometimes hit the nail swiftly on the head, and at other times, missed the nail completely and instead whacked the player's thumb. To see what I mean, let's take a retrospective look at one of my favourite racers of the last decade.
Project Gotham Racing 1
The first game of the series, Project Gotham Racing, was a successful release title for the original Xbox. The game did a few things well like having a large collection of tracks to race on and a decent soundtrack, but the racing mechanics are a little clunky and the collection of cars available is a little stunted in comparison with the series' descendants.
The game sets you up with three rather lowly cars and then gives you a few different modes to play in; the biggest of these is Kudos Challenge. Here you're given a series of events to race in, all of which you must complete with at least a bronze medal ranking to advance to the next series. Project Gotham Racing's focus as a racing game is not only on driving with speed, but also with flair and so to reward stylish driving techniques like powerslides, overtaking other cars, following an ideal line around corners and flying through the air, you're awarded Kudos (points) and Kudos manoeuvres in quick succession result in combos, garnering bonuses. If you win an event, the Kudos you earn during the event, plus a bonus depending on how difficult the event was, are added to your total, and when you earn enough new cars are unlocked, as are new tracks as you race on them.
In each racing event you are trying to fulfil two things. Firstly, a target relating to the race, which may be finishing third or better in a street race or overtaking four cars in an overtake event. You can generally pump the target variable up or down depending on how much you want to challenge yourself, plus there's the temptation of bonus kudos for setting the bar higher. Secondly, you're trying to gain enough Kudos during the race to be awarded a medal, as without at least a bronze medal, the event remains unfinished and you cannot progress.
There are an interesting variety of events to compete in. You've got self-explanatory Street Races and One-On-One events where you're in a race to the finish with other opponents, and Hot Laps where you're racing against the clock. Then there are things like Style Challenges, where you have to rack up a set number of Kudos aided by cone gates (sets of cones on the track which award Kudos for being successfully driven through,) Overtake events in which you're trying to speed past a certain number or vehicles, and Speed Challenges, where you have to get your speedometer hit a set target. The variety helps keep it fresh but there are some problems in the gameplay that damage the amount of play time you'll get out of it.
The signs are simple to follow, but that doesn't mean you have to follow them.
You can use any car you like for any event, provided that you've unlocked it, but events are set up in a way that they are difficult with the range of cars you've access to at any point in time. AI opponents choose their cars based on the one that you pick (so there's no leaving Mini Coopers in the dust of your 360 Modena,) and they often tend to follow one static line around the course (often at a higher speed than the player could reach in the same car) so races end up being a little difficult throughout.
This is cemented by the game's sketchy racing mechanics. Powerslides turn ugly pretty easily and you will find yourself spinning out a lot, especially in cars with bad handling. You'll find that cars are tossed around in an unrealistic manner when they collide with each other, and if you should be the one being spun out as your competitors speed off, you'll be annoyed with the reverse gear, which regardless of what car you're driving, takes a few seconds to engage and can quickly end your hopes of winning a race.
About a third of the cars cannot be unlocked in the Kudos challenge mode, but instead by finishing different tiers of Arcade and Quick races (which are simply collections of style challenges and quick races, respectively.) Furthermore, there are only 29 cars in the game, a fair portion of which aren't that flash. I understand that Project Gotham Racing was a launch title and as such I shouldn't expect the 20 different kinds of Ferrari, but it's a little disappointing when you consider that Gran Turismo 3 which was released just a few months beforehand weighed in with just over 150 (which was in fact, rather low by Gran Turismo standards.)
At the opposite end of the scale, everything else has been done rather well and with some stronger driving mechanics it could have been a real gem of a game. The game authentically recreates New York City, San Francisco, Tokyo and London, splitting them each into three districts with 17 tracks each. A racecourse is comprised of real-world streets contained into a nice circuit and cut off from traffic with the help of some Armco barriers. Jumping down the famous hills of San Francisco or through bumpy gravel in Hyde Park is good fun, and despite a fair few tracks being quite similar (perhaps with only a block or two length difference) there's a lot to race on if you've the patience to unlock them through the Kudos challenge.
There's a nice soundtrack in place, with the game's music coming in the form of recordings of DJ's from whichever city you may be driving in doing their usual bits in between songs. The songs themselves are mainly rock, pop, hip hop and other miscellaneous bits and pieces, which work well towards making driving more enjoyable. Engine noise, tyre screeches, knocks and other effect all sound pretty decent, but never really stand out, and there's a the odd touch like a car alarm or subway train in the distance.
New streetlights purchased by the City of New York consumed ten percent less electricity than the old ones, but came with the trade off of not lighting anything up.
The graphics do show their age a little bit with colours looking a little bit flat and fairly standard for the time it was made. There are a couple of issues, like the poorly lit nighttime races. A candle would easily outdo your average streetlight and your headlights aren't much help either, making seeing what's ahead of you difficult. As you gain Kudos, the amount you're earned shows up on screen, but the interface is bulky and covers up a big portion of the screen that you might want for trivial things, like seeing corners, none of the camera angles are that great, and a helmet camera is absent altogether.
Project Gotham Racing was a game to get the Xbox into a gear (pun,) and it was a success in that regard, but as a game it falls short in comparison with some other games that were available at the time, and even more so when you hold it against it's sequels.
Project Gotham Racing 2
Project Gotham Racing 2 came to the Xbox two years into it's lifetime, this time with a Ferrari Enzo on the cover, and just about every aspect of the game refined reworked to a state of near perfection.
This time around the big portion of the game is the Kudos World Series; a long collection of events split up into 14 different series'. Each series of races is associated with a different class of car and all the events in it can only be driven in with cars that class, and while a series may have many individual events, they're clumped together in sets of two or three and unlocked once the previous cluster has been completed, creating a constant feeling of progression (something I found lacking in PGR1.) You start at the bottom in the Compact Sport class and then work your way up through an eclectic range of vehicles, ranging from Coupes to Roadsters, Supercars to SUVs, and everything in between.
The Kudos system has been given an overhaul and it now feels user friendly, giving you greater choice in how you play the game. Kudos earned in races and from win bonuses are added to the Kudos total as before, but instead of cars being unlocked automatically you have to unlock them yourself with tokens. Tokens are awarded incrementally and in greater volumes each time you reach a milestone by getting your total kudos up to a certain value giving you some freedom in what car you take into an event.
Koenigsegggsigggeggegigioabbaviking.
Driving is a lot tighter than in PGR1 with cars each feeling very unique in the way they drive. A good example of this comes in the Pacific Muscle class. Here, the Nissan Skyline reigns king in power and speed, but has a tendency to fishtail out of corners if not taken slowly enough, whereas the Mazda RX-7 while perhaps not quite as beefy will make significant cuts on the Nissan's lap times on twisty circuits thanks to is excellent ability to take a corner. As another example, Porsches have a definite feeling of weight to them but they grip like no man's business, whereas their direct competitors Ferrari make nice all rounders, even if some of the older models are a little slide happy. I could name differences for hours, but it's easily cut short by saying that every car is different, and you'll need to use a variety of them to get through different events.
Speaking of which, the different events have been tweaked for the better and are now a lot more fun to race in. Street races, One-On-One, Overtake events and Hot Laps all remain reasonably the same, but a lot more fun due to the improved driving mechanics and a greater variance of track designs. Style Challenges have been renamed Cone Challenges, and are now laid out in a way that you can now connect a combo all the way around the circuit, providing you have the driving finesse to do so, and finally Speed Challenges are now simply Speed Cameras, in which you're given a short section of track with a difficult corner you must navigate before gunning it past a speed camera at the end of the track, trying to hit a target speed.
PGR2 looks great, even in comparison with some of today's games. It's doesn't win out against them, of course, but it's to the game's credit that they've held up so well over so long. Car models are highly detailed, both outside and in (though we're still missing a helmet camera to see interiors properly) as are the cities you race in, and there are some great light and shadow effects at place, including some light glare bouncing off of your car as you drive directly towards the sun, along with little bits and pieces to add to the environment like birds flying, papers fluttering across the track and theme park lights flashing in the distance. I'll admit that water looks sort of unnaturally flat and that there are certain places where you'll see slight jagged edges, but beyond that the graphics have aged very well indeed.
I'll also say that PGR2 has the best range of cities and tracks of the series. You'll be racing from the speedy, flowing tracks of Barcelona and the tight, low gear corners of Stockholm to the wide, drift-begging roads of Moscow and the long, fast paced streets of Sydney. There are 11 different locations in total, including the world famous Nürburgring, each faithfully recreated and with a defined look and feel.
Radio Stations are back again, along with an extensive list of tunes to listen to while racing. The range goes a little broader this time, with rock, hip hop, pop, chill out, electronica thrown in to make driving that little bit more enjoyable. Cars all sound unique and even those within the same class have their distinct differences, and effects sound nice and sharp.
It's a great car, so long as you don't mind hitting everything in sight.
The interface and menus have been cleaned up very nicely. The speedometer, kudos display, map and other important things for during a race have all been made slightly transparent and moved around so that they don't invade your field of view, and menus are also free of clutter and breezy to go through. One thing I like in particular is the methods of selecting a car for an event. You could select your car from a simple list, but that's how sensible people who work in banks do it.
While PGR 2 does give you that option, and also allows you go into garages housing all the cars from each class together for a nice 360 degree perspective of the cars in the class, with one's you don't own yet covered with a tarpaulin. In the mood to browse? Then you might like the showroom where you can run around in first person perspective raining down P90 fire looking at all the beautiful cars in all the different rooms, sorted by their respective manufacturers. There's even a speedy test track that you can take a spin on before choosing to spend your tokens, which was thankfully adopted for the rest of the games in the series.
Bizzare Creations outdid themselves with Project Gotham Racing 2, improving their formula in just about every area and tightening up the driving for what is one of the best arcade racers for the console in recent years.
Project Gotham Racing 3
Fast forward another two years and we reach Project Gotham Racing 3, a launch title for the Xbox 360 and pretty much the only game that was worth owning at the it's release. The focus has been moved away from a diverse range of vehicles, to predominantly Supercars, with not one car in the entire game having a top speed underneath 170 miles per hour.
The big mode on the series' third outing is Gotham Career, described by the game as a global celebration of speed and style. The progression system has changed once again; now blocks of races are categorised by city, with the occasional world event taking place over a few different cities. You now earn credits for successfully completing races and finishing tournaments which you can then use to fill your garages with cars, and Kudos are pushed to the side somewhat, their only long-term purpose being that they unlock concept cars once you've accumulated enough.
Driving is still pretty strong, even if it is a little more drift happy this time around. While slides are a little easier to fall into, they've also become a little more controllable. Don't get me wrong; go to heavy on the handbrake and you will be at the back of the chase and swinging too wide will put a big dent in your lap time and acceleration out a corner, but once you get the hang of it, going sideways around hairpins and S-bends becomes a whole lot of fun.
Old event types are carried over from the previous game and play out just about the same, but there are some imaginative newcomers to the game. Playing to the nature of the slidey driving are the Time Vs. Kudos events, where you have to get around the track in a short amount of time but the timer is paused when Kudos moves are performed, creating some nice tension. Then there are Eliminator races, which are like a Street Race but the last person to complete each lap is eliminated until only one car is left, Drift Challenges where you're aiming to stack up a set number of Kudos, but the catch is that only drifting moves count, and Breakthrough events which are for all intents and purposes, checkpoint races.
A lot of cars only come in one colour, and for some reason that colour is always saftey vest orange.
For a release game, PGR3 looks exceptional. The bright, detailed cities of London, Tokyo, New York, Las Vegas and both the old and new Nürburgring F1 circuits are all fantastic visual treats. Model detail is exceptional and we finally have a helmet camera to see the shiny interiors of cars. The big thing you'll notice is the amount of eye candy pumped into the game. There are flashing billboards, TV cameras, street signs and tracksides lined, nay, crowded with cheering fans, snapping pictures as you speed past them. There's even the nice touch of them jumping back when you collide with barriers near to them. It achieves all of this without any glitching or noticeable framerate drops, and at very worst a few jagged edges, for which it should be commended.
While the radio stations are (sadly) cut from this rendition, there's still a strong list of tracks on your "CD Player" to make up for it. In addition to most of the genres of music in PGR2, industrial, J-Pop, classical and even Bhangra of all things are included, and easily switched between mid-race with the D-Pad, which is an improvement of clicking the right stick and searching through which was always a bit of a risky thing to do mid race. Jump in a powerful car and you'll hear a great roar of the engine, differing greatly from car to car, and all in all sound design puts another gold star on PGR's record.
But now it's time to rip a couple off because there are a couple of little issues. The menus are slow to go through, thanks to some over-stylisation, and had to get information from because of decidedly small font sizes. The Gotham Career is definitely the shortest of the series, and not helped by the fact that there's no Arcade mode to fall back on like in PGR2, making the playtime you'll get out of it a bit shorter.
Do you like winning? Buy an Atom! Or any car for that matter. It's not terribly important in the end.
And, sure, centring in on the very fastest cars in the world is a great idea because everyone likes to drive fast. But the result of the glut on these high performance vehicles is that that you're not encouraged to try a lot of new cars out because they're all fast and all handle much the same. Any car can be taken into any event but there's not much reason to change in-between events as opponents and challenges scale according to what car you choose, resulting in a similar problem to what we had in PGR1. A large number of the cars feel quite the same and while there are some that will handle better and worse than others, once you find one that works well for you you'll probably just run with it for most of the game.
Or perhaps I just I'm making a big thing of this. Really, the driving is still fun in Project Gotham Racing 3 and it isn't what could be called a bad game by any means, but it is a little bit of a departure from Project Gotham 2's rock solid setup, to which you may be a little disappointed.
Project Gotham Racing 4
Project Gotham Racing 4's development schedule was the first in which Bizzare weren't having to prop up a major release. PGR1 and 3 both had to help boost new consoles, and PGR2 had to be ready in time to launch with Xbox Live, each of which cut into their development time by the developers' own admittance. Without any deadlines to restrict them, Bizzare were finally able to spread their wings and take the game to it's full potential.
And they couldn't have cocked it up any harder.
Okay, that's probably a bit harsh. There are a lot of things I like about the fourth and final Project Gotham, and at it's core it's a great fun to play, but there are some ludicrous design choices that can be real game breakers.
The big addition to the game is the ability to drive motorcycles in events. Their typical characteristics are that they accelerate a lot faster than cars, but aren't quite so easy around the corners. Bikes also let you pull wheelies and endos for Kudos, and if you can hold them long enough you can attempt daredevilish stunts.
You might be thinking that putting cars and bikes together on a racetrack will sooner or later result bodies being flung Grand Theft Auto style, and you'd be right. You will fall off a motorcycle if you plough into the back of a car or section of Armco at 150 k/ph and have to face reset, and if you try hard enough you can ram down opponent motorcyclists with your car (to great delight!) Allowances have been made so that you're not falling off every five seconds and you can have knocks and bumps with cars and the trackside at lower speeds without greater consequence than if you were driving a car, but regardless bikes are a bit of a gimmick and the relative ease of falling off them means cars remain the vehicle of choice for those serious about coming first.
Rocket Man! Burning out his fuse out here alone!
The other really big addition to the game is the dynamic weather that can drastically effect how vehicles handle. There are now ten different types of weather that can be raced in; two different flavours of rain and fog, ice, snow, stormy, overcast, cloudy and fine. Rain makes everything a little bit slippery, snow even more so and ice even more so than that, for example. Fog is harder to see through, encouraging careful driving, whereas fine weather helps keep a nice level playing field. What's interesting is that the weather can change for better or worse during a race, meaning you have to change your driving style on the fly. There's no "sunny day to snowstorm" type progression, but more realistic ones, like going from cloud cover to rain, or snowfall stopping halfway through a race.
Dynamic weather, when coupled with some rock solid driving mechanics, makes for some of the most enjoyable racing on the 360. The unique feeling and performance of each vehicle as we had in PGR2 and the ease of controlling slides from PGR3 are blended seamlessly, delivering fast paced and exciting driving to the player. Driving with care and forethought will shave a lot of time off your lap, and the weather effects will force you to think about how you drive and take different lines, making for a very authentic experience.
And by god does it look good. The jaggies are all very minimal the texturing is top notch wherever you look. The weather system has let the design team go wild, and now as you race you'll see your car getting dirtier as you race. All of the locations from PGR3 are reused here however they've been given noticeable touch ups to look that little bit better, and the new locations of Shanghai, Macau, and St. Petersburg are all very detailed and unique. When you drive at high speeds the camera will begin to shake around a little and your surroundings have a nice motion blur effect, which really helps draw you into the game.
Furthermore, there's an excellent range of lighting that make the surroundings feel genuine, and we've even got the attention to detail of a different tachometer for each car reflective of the one they'd have in real life when in the chase camera. It's worth mentioning that PGR4 is the first title in the series without any damage modelling, which isn't that bad a thing, but it's just a little odd to come out of 100 mile an hour collisions without a scratch. Sound is brilliant as ever now that the track list has been extended and fits in very well with the fast paced racing, and let me tell you that there is nothing like Flight Of The Bumblebees to compliment challenging One-on-One race.
But then it all hits the wall, just like this DBR9 is about to.
So why is the game so bad? The huge shambles that is the career mode is why. The career is now spread out across a calendar with a couple of championships taking place each month. The better you place in a championships final standings, the more career points you earn and the more of those you have the higher you move up in the overall rankings. The major problem is that the career mode takes realism to a whole new level, not allowing you to redo a championship if you perform unfavourably for an entire in game year. If you finish a race and don't meet the target you were trying to reach, you don't get to do it over, and after the first race, you're not given the possibility of changing your vehicle; you're stuck with it for the rest of the championship.
This is unheard of in racing games. You will undoubtedly make mistakes in just about any racer and you're nearly always given the option of restarts should you mess up, but not being able to in PGR4 feels abrasive and unfriendly. I can't fathom why restarts have been removed. It's realistic, certainly, but it's not going to resonate well with an audience that isn't looking for it.
Elsewhere, Kudos are now the currency used to buy things. I say "things" because in addition to buying cars, you now have to buy tracks and game modes with your Kudos if you'd like more than the relatively meagre selection you're given by default, and things now have to be bought in packages rather than individually, which can be a pain if you only want one car out of four.
And finally the menus are a pain to get though. There's a lot of information available for each race but it's hard to extract because of the over-stylisation of the menu interface. Tiny fonts, long fade-in effects, over clutter and distracting water droplets on the screen make going through the menus a chore.
However, despite all this Project Gotham Racing 4 is the only game in the series featuring the Audi R8 and is therefore, automatically, the best.
The Bottom Line: The Project Gotham Racing games remain fun today and shouldn't be overlooked by car enthusiasts and lovers of racing games, however some titles are definitely better than others.
Recommendations: If you were to go out to buy one of the games today, then Project Gotham Racing 2 would be my pick, simply because of it's perfect execution of the formula. PGR3 is a very close second, also worth picking up, and if you've got saintly patience for the career mode in PGR4, it will deliver stunning visuals and solid gameplay. However give PGR1 a miss, as it really comes across as Bizarre's way of testing the water.
If you made it through all that, have an e-cookie.
The Project Gotham Racing Series
Since it's release in November 2001, Bizzare Creations' Project Gotham Racing series has been the Xbox's flagship racing title. It's formula of letting players get behind the wheel of the some of the world's most desirable production cars and then race them in beautiful real world cities is a simple one, but across the series' four renditions, Bizzare has sometimes hit the nail swiftly on the head, and at other times, missed the nail completely and instead whacked the player's thumb. To see what I mean, let's take a retrospective look at one of my favourite racers of the last decade.
Project Gotham Racing 1
The first game of the series, Project Gotham Racing, was a successful release title for the original Xbox. The game did a few things well like having a large collection of tracks to race on and a decent soundtrack, but the racing mechanics are a little clunky and the collection of cars available is a little stunted in comparison with the series' descendants.
The game sets you up with three rather lowly cars and then gives you a few different modes to play in; the biggest of these is Kudos Challenge. Here you're given a series of events to race in, all of which you must complete with at least a bronze medal ranking to advance to the next series. Project Gotham Racing's focus as a racing game is not only on driving with speed, but also with flair and so to reward stylish driving techniques like powerslides, overtaking other cars, following an ideal line around corners and flying through the air, you're awarded Kudos (points) and Kudos manoeuvres in quick succession result in combos, garnering bonuses. If you win an event, the Kudos you earn during the event, plus a bonus depending on how difficult the event was, are added to your total, and when you earn enough new cars are unlocked, as are new tracks as you race on them.
In each racing event you are trying to fulfil two things. Firstly, a target relating to the race, which may be finishing third or better in a street race or overtaking four cars in an overtake event. You can generally pump the target variable up or down depending on how much you want to challenge yourself, plus there's the temptation of bonus kudos for setting the bar higher. Secondly, you're trying to gain enough Kudos during the race to be awarded a medal, as without at least a bronze medal, the event remains unfinished and you cannot progress.
There are an interesting variety of events to compete in. You've got self-explanatory Street Races and One-On-One events where you're in a race to the finish with other opponents, and Hot Laps where you're racing against the clock. Then there are things like Style Challenges, where you have to rack up a set number of Kudos aided by cone gates (sets of cones on the track which award Kudos for being successfully driven through,) Overtake events in which you're trying to speed past a certain number or vehicles, and Speed Challenges, where you have to get your speedometer hit a set target. The variety helps keep it fresh but there are some problems in the gameplay that damage the amount of play time you'll get out of it.
The signs are simple to follow, but that doesn't mean you have to follow them.
You can use any car you like for any event, provided that you've unlocked it, but events are set up in a way that they are difficult with the range of cars you've access to at any point in time. AI opponents choose their cars based on the one that you pick (so there's no leaving Mini Coopers in the dust of your 360 Modena,) and they often tend to follow one static line around the course (often at a higher speed than the player could reach in the same car) so races end up being a little difficult throughout.
This is cemented by the game's sketchy racing mechanics. Powerslides turn ugly pretty easily and you will find yourself spinning out a lot, especially in cars with bad handling. You'll find that cars are tossed around in an unrealistic manner when they collide with each other, and if you should be the one being spun out as your competitors speed off, you'll be annoyed with the reverse gear, which regardless of what car you're driving, takes a few seconds to engage and can quickly end your hopes of winning a race.
About a third of the cars cannot be unlocked in the Kudos challenge mode, but instead by finishing different tiers of Arcade and Quick races (which are simply collections of style challenges and quick races, respectively.) Furthermore, there are only 29 cars in the game, a fair portion of which aren't that flash. I understand that Project Gotham Racing was a launch title and as such I shouldn't expect the 20 different kinds of Ferrari, but it's a little disappointing when you consider that Gran Turismo 3 which was released just a few months beforehand weighed in with just over 150 (which was in fact, rather low by Gran Turismo standards.)
At the opposite end of the scale, everything else has been done rather well and with some stronger driving mechanics it could have been a real gem of a game. The game authentically recreates New York City, San Francisco, Tokyo and London, splitting them each into three districts with 17 tracks each. A racecourse is comprised of real-world streets contained into a nice circuit and cut off from traffic with the help of some Armco barriers. Jumping down the famous hills of San Francisco or through bumpy gravel in Hyde Park is good fun, and despite a fair few tracks being quite similar (perhaps with only a block or two length difference) there's a lot to race on if you've the patience to unlock them through the Kudos challenge.
There's a nice soundtrack in place, with the game's music coming in the form of recordings of DJ's from whichever city you may be driving in doing their usual bits in between songs. The songs themselves are mainly rock, pop, hip hop and other miscellaneous bits and pieces, which work well towards making driving more enjoyable. Engine noise, tyre screeches, knocks and other effect all sound pretty decent, but never really stand out, and there's a the odd touch like a car alarm or subway train in the distance.
New streetlights purchased by the City of New York consumed ten percent less electricity than the old ones, but came with the trade off of not lighting anything up.
The graphics do show their age a little bit with colours looking a little bit flat and fairly standard for the time it was made. There are a couple of issues, like the poorly lit nighttime races. A candle would easily outdo your average streetlight and your headlights aren't much help either, making seeing what's ahead of you difficult. As you gain Kudos, the amount you're earned shows up on screen, but the interface is bulky and covers up a big portion of the screen that you might want for trivial things, like seeing corners, none of the camera angles are that great, and a helmet camera is absent altogether.
Project Gotham Racing was a game to get the Xbox into a gear (pun,) and it was a success in that regard, but as a game it falls short in comparison with some other games that were available at the time, and even more so when you hold it against it's sequels.
Project Gotham Racing 2
Project Gotham Racing 2 came to the Xbox two years into it's lifetime, this time with a Ferrari Enzo on the cover, and just about every aspect of the game refined reworked to a state of near perfection.
This time around the big portion of the game is the Kudos World Series; a long collection of events split up into 14 different series'. Each series of races is associated with a different class of car and all the events in it can only be driven in with cars that class, and while a series may have many individual events, they're clumped together in sets of two or three and unlocked once the previous cluster has been completed, creating a constant feeling of progression (something I found lacking in PGR1.) You start at the bottom in the Compact Sport class and then work your way up through an eclectic range of vehicles, ranging from Coupes to Roadsters, Supercars to SUVs, and everything in between.
The Kudos system has been given an overhaul and it now feels user friendly, giving you greater choice in how you play the game. Kudos earned in races and from win bonuses are added to the Kudos total as before, but instead of cars being unlocked automatically you have to unlock them yourself with tokens. Tokens are awarded incrementally and in greater volumes each time you reach a milestone by getting your total kudos up to a certain value giving you some freedom in what car you take into an event.
Koenigsegggsigggeggegigioabbaviking.
Driving is a lot tighter than in PGR1 with cars each feeling very unique in the way they drive. A good example of this comes in the Pacific Muscle class. Here, the Nissan Skyline reigns king in power and speed, but has a tendency to fishtail out of corners if not taken slowly enough, whereas the Mazda RX-7 while perhaps not quite as beefy will make significant cuts on the Nissan's lap times on twisty circuits thanks to is excellent ability to take a corner. As another example, Porsches have a definite feeling of weight to them but they grip like no man's business, whereas their direct competitors Ferrari make nice all rounders, even if some of the older models are a little slide happy. I could name differences for hours, but it's easily cut short by saying that every car is different, and you'll need to use a variety of them to get through different events.
Speaking of which, the different events have been tweaked for the better and are now a lot more fun to race in. Street races, One-On-One, Overtake events and Hot Laps all remain reasonably the same, but a lot more fun due to the improved driving mechanics and a greater variance of track designs. Style Challenges have been renamed Cone Challenges, and are now laid out in a way that you can now connect a combo all the way around the circuit, providing you have the driving finesse to do so, and finally Speed Challenges are now simply Speed Cameras, in which you're given a short section of track with a difficult corner you must navigate before gunning it past a speed camera at the end of the track, trying to hit a target speed.
PGR2 looks great, even in comparison with some of today's games. It's doesn't win out against them, of course, but it's to the game's credit that they've held up so well over so long. Car models are highly detailed, both outside and in (though we're still missing a helmet camera to see interiors properly) as are the cities you race in, and there are some great light and shadow effects at place, including some light glare bouncing off of your car as you drive directly towards the sun, along with little bits and pieces to add to the environment like birds flying, papers fluttering across the track and theme park lights flashing in the distance. I'll admit that water looks sort of unnaturally flat and that there are certain places where you'll see slight jagged edges, but beyond that the graphics have aged very well indeed.
I'll also say that PGR2 has the best range of cities and tracks of the series. You'll be racing from the speedy, flowing tracks of Barcelona and the tight, low gear corners of Stockholm to the wide, drift-begging roads of Moscow and the long, fast paced streets of Sydney. There are 11 different locations in total, including the world famous Nürburgring, each faithfully recreated and with a defined look and feel.
Radio Stations are back again, along with an extensive list of tunes to listen to while racing. The range goes a little broader this time, with rock, hip hop, pop, chill out, electronica thrown in to make driving that little bit more enjoyable. Cars all sound unique and even those within the same class have their distinct differences, and effects sound nice and sharp.
It's a great car, so long as you don't mind hitting everything in sight.
The interface and menus have been cleaned up very nicely. The speedometer, kudos display, map and other important things for during a race have all been made slightly transparent and moved around so that they don't invade your field of view, and menus are also free of clutter and breezy to go through. One thing I like in particular is the methods of selecting a car for an event. You could select your car from a simple list, but that's how sensible people who work in banks do it.
While PGR 2 does give you that option, and also allows you go into garages housing all the cars from each class together for a nice 360 degree perspective of the cars in the class, with one's you don't own yet covered with a tarpaulin. In the mood to browse? Then you might like the showroom where you can run around in first person perspective raining down P90 fire looking at all the beautiful cars in all the different rooms, sorted by their respective manufacturers. There's even a speedy test track that you can take a spin on before choosing to spend your tokens, which was thankfully adopted for the rest of the games in the series.
Bizzare Creations outdid themselves with Project Gotham Racing 2, improving their formula in just about every area and tightening up the driving for what is one of the best arcade racers for the console in recent years.
Project Gotham Racing 3
Fast forward another two years and we reach Project Gotham Racing 3, a launch title for the Xbox 360 and pretty much the only game that was worth owning at the it's release. The focus has been moved away from a diverse range of vehicles, to predominantly Supercars, with not one car in the entire game having a top speed underneath 170 miles per hour.
The big mode on the series' third outing is Gotham Career, described by the game as a global celebration of speed and style. The progression system has changed once again; now blocks of races are categorised by city, with the occasional world event taking place over a few different cities. You now earn credits for successfully completing races and finishing tournaments which you can then use to fill your garages with cars, and Kudos are pushed to the side somewhat, their only long-term purpose being that they unlock concept cars once you've accumulated enough.
Driving is still pretty strong, even if it is a little more drift happy this time around. While slides are a little easier to fall into, they've also become a little more controllable. Don't get me wrong; go to heavy on the handbrake and you will be at the back of the chase and swinging too wide will put a big dent in your lap time and acceleration out a corner, but once you get the hang of it, going sideways around hairpins and S-bends becomes a whole lot of fun.
Old event types are carried over from the previous game and play out just about the same, but there are some imaginative newcomers to the game. Playing to the nature of the slidey driving are the Time Vs. Kudos events, where you have to get around the track in a short amount of time but the timer is paused when Kudos moves are performed, creating some nice tension. Then there are Eliminator races, which are like a Street Race but the last person to complete each lap is eliminated until only one car is left, Drift Challenges where you're aiming to stack up a set number of Kudos, but the catch is that only drifting moves count, and Breakthrough events which are for all intents and purposes, checkpoint races.
A lot of cars only come in one colour, and for some reason that colour is always saftey vest orange.
For a release game, PGR3 looks exceptional. The bright, detailed cities of London, Tokyo, New York, Las Vegas and both the old and new Nürburgring F1 circuits are all fantastic visual treats. Model detail is exceptional and we finally have a helmet camera to see the shiny interiors of cars. The big thing you'll notice is the amount of eye candy pumped into the game. There are flashing billboards, TV cameras, street signs and tracksides lined, nay, crowded with cheering fans, snapping pictures as you speed past them. There's even the nice touch of them jumping back when you collide with barriers near to them. It achieves all of this without any glitching or noticeable framerate drops, and at very worst a few jagged edges, for which it should be commended.
While the radio stations are (sadly) cut from this rendition, there's still a strong list of tracks on your "CD Player" to make up for it. In addition to most of the genres of music in PGR2, industrial, J-Pop, classical and even Bhangra of all things are included, and easily switched between mid-race with the D-Pad, which is an improvement of clicking the right stick and searching through which was always a bit of a risky thing to do mid race. Jump in a powerful car and you'll hear a great roar of the engine, differing greatly from car to car, and all in all sound design puts another gold star on PGR's record.
But now it's time to rip a couple off because there are a couple of little issues. The menus are slow to go through, thanks to some over-stylisation, and had to get information from because of decidedly small font sizes. The Gotham Career is definitely the shortest of the series, and not helped by the fact that there's no Arcade mode to fall back on like in PGR2, making the playtime you'll get out of it a bit shorter.
Do you like winning? Buy an Atom! Or any car for that matter. It's not terribly important in the end.
And, sure, centring in on the very fastest cars in the world is a great idea because everyone likes to drive fast. But the result of the glut on these high performance vehicles is that that you're not encouraged to try a lot of new cars out because they're all fast and all handle much the same. Any car can be taken into any event but there's not much reason to change in-between events as opponents and challenges scale according to what car you choose, resulting in a similar problem to what we had in PGR1. A large number of the cars feel quite the same and while there are some that will handle better and worse than others, once you find one that works well for you you'll probably just run with it for most of the game.
Or perhaps I just I'm making a big thing of this. Really, the driving is still fun in Project Gotham Racing 3 and it isn't what could be called a bad game by any means, but it is a little bit of a departure from Project Gotham 2's rock solid setup, to which you may be a little disappointed.
Project Gotham Racing 4
Project Gotham Racing 4's development schedule was the first in which Bizzare weren't having to prop up a major release. PGR1 and 3 both had to help boost new consoles, and PGR2 had to be ready in time to launch with Xbox Live, each of which cut into their development time by the developers' own admittance. Without any deadlines to restrict them, Bizzare were finally able to spread their wings and take the game to it's full potential.
And they couldn't have cocked it up any harder.
Okay, that's probably a bit harsh. There are a lot of things I like about the fourth and final Project Gotham, and at it's core it's a great fun to play, but there are some ludicrous design choices that can be real game breakers.
The big addition to the game is the ability to drive motorcycles in events. Their typical characteristics are that they accelerate a lot faster than cars, but aren't quite so easy around the corners. Bikes also let you pull wheelies and endos for Kudos, and if you can hold them long enough you can attempt daredevilish stunts.
You might be thinking that putting cars and bikes together on a racetrack will sooner or later result bodies being flung Grand Theft Auto style, and you'd be right. You will fall off a motorcycle if you plough into the back of a car or section of Armco at 150 k/ph and have to face reset, and if you try hard enough you can ram down opponent motorcyclists with your car (to great delight!) Allowances have been made so that you're not falling off every five seconds and you can have knocks and bumps with cars and the trackside at lower speeds without greater consequence than if you were driving a car, but regardless bikes are a bit of a gimmick and the relative ease of falling off them means cars remain the vehicle of choice for those serious about coming first.
Rocket Man! Burning out his fuse out here alone!
The other really big addition to the game is the dynamic weather that can drastically effect how vehicles handle. There are now ten different types of weather that can be raced in; two different flavours of rain and fog, ice, snow, stormy, overcast, cloudy and fine. Rain makes everything a little bit slippery, snow even more so and ice even more so than that, for example. Fog is harder to see through, encouraging careful driving, whereas fine weather helps keep a nice level playing field. What's interesting is that the weather can change for better or worse during a race, meaning you have to change your driving style on the fly. There's no "sunny day to snowstorm" type progression, but more realistic ones, like going from cloud cover to rain, or snowfall stopping halfway through a race.
Dynamic weather, when coupled with some rock solid driving mechanics, makes for some of the most enjoyable racing on the 360. The unique feeling and performance of each vehicle as we had in PGR2 and the ease of controlling slides from PGR3 are blended seamlessly, delivering fast paced and exciting driving to the player. Driving with care and forethought will shave a lot of time off your lap, and the weather effects will force you to think about how you drive and take different lines, making for a very authentic experience.
And by god does it look good. The jaggies are all very minimal the texturing is top notch wherever you look. The weather system has let the design team go wild, and now as you race you'll see your car getting dirtier as you race. All of the locations from PGR3 are reused here however they've been given noticeable touch ups to look that little bit better, and the new locations of Shanghai, Macau, and St. Petersburg are all very detailed and unique. When you drive at high speeds the camera will begin to shake around a little and your surroundings have a nice motion blur effect, which really helps draw you into the game.
Furthermore, there's an excellent range of lighting that make the surroundings feel genuine, and we've even got the attention to detail of a different tachometer for each car reflective of the one they'd have in real life when in the chase camera. It's worth mentioning that PGR4 is the first title in the series without any damage modelling, which isn't that bad a thing, but it's just a little odd to come out of 100 mile an hour collisions without a scratch. Sound is brilliant as ever now that the track list has been extended and fits in very well with the fast paced racing, and let me tell you that there is nothing like Flight Of The Bumblebees to compliment challenging One-on-One race.
But then it all hits the wall, just like this DBR9 is about to.
So why is the game so bad? The huge shambles that is the career mode is why. The career is now spread out across a calendar with a couple of championships taking place each month. The better you place in a championships final standings, the more career points you earn and the more of those you have the higher you move up in the overall rankings. The major problem is that the career mode takes realism to a whole new level, not allowing you to redo a championship if you perform unfavourably for an entire in game year. If you finish a race and don't meet the target you were trying to reach, you don't get to do it over, and after the first race, you're not given the possibility of changing your vehicle; you're stuck with it for the rest of the championship.
This is unheard of in racing games. You will undoubtedly make mistakes in just about any racer and you're nearly always given the option of restarts should you mess up, but not being able to in PGR4 feels abrasive and unfriendly. I can't fathom why restarts have been removed. It's realistic, certainly, but it's not going to resonate well with an audience that isn't looking for it.
Elsewhere, Kudos are now the currency used to buy things. I say "things" because in addition to buying cars, you now have to buy tracks and game modes with your Kudos if you'd like more than the relatively meagre selection you're given by default, and things now have to be bought in packages rather than individually, which can be a pain if you only want one car out of four.
And finally the menus are a pain to get though. There's a lot of information available for each race but it's hard to extract because of the over-stylisation of the menu interface. Tiny fonts, long fade-in effects, over clutter and distracting water droplets on the screen make going through the menus a chore.
However, despite all this Project Gotham Racing 4 is the only game in the series featuring the Audi R8 and is therefore, automatically, the best.
The Bottom Line: The Project Gotham Racing games remain fun today and shouldn't be overlooked by car enthusiasts and lovers of racing games, however some titles are definitely better than others.
Recommendations: If you were to go out to buy one of the games today, then Project Gotham Racing 2 would be my pick, simply because of it's perfect execution of the formula. PGR3 is a very close second, also worth picking up, and if you've got saintly patience for the career mode in PGR4, it will deliver stunning visuals and solid gameplay. However give PGR1 a miss, as it really comes across as Bizarre's way of testing the water.
If you made it through all that, have an e-cookie.
