Project Gotham Racing

The Good
The game requires top racing skills learned by advancing through levels and earning more and more high performance autos. The cars can be customized to your own style, The music installed induces risk taking maneuvers. The music can be changed by downloading your own cds to the X-Box. At higher levels the computer-controlled cars become more and more aggressive.

The Bad
The X-Box won't accept MG3 ripped songs to download. There is little personality to the drivers.

The Bottom Line
Intense Fun Action Addictive

The Good
The reward system, based on giving Kudo points for driving well, is a nice idea and made me at least try it some more. Also, the game's loading times are fast (but you can expect that from a PC-like machine).

The Bad
Well, it was the first Xbox game I ever played - we got a demo Xbox for our store, but Microsoft gave us only one game so I can't compare. But what I know for sure is that this Project Gotham Racing is not the "eXPerience" I had expected. It is not bad, but before the background that the console costs about $500 here and a game sells at $60, it better had been really good.

The graphics... yes, I had a console called Dreamcast which could deliver the same graphics - and it was much cheaper :) When I saw on MobyGames that the same team who did PGR was responsible for MSR (on Dreamcast) too, this explained much to me :) I mean, the graphics are okay, but not for a $500 machine with high-end graphic custom chips. The controls are a bit soft, the car is not easy to steer through the really narrow curves. When I speak about curves - most of the tracks are too dark so that you can't see the curves before you crash in the wall that surrounds the track. In split screen mode, this gets worse because you just see half of the screen.

The Bottom Line
As mentioned, I played this game on a demo console in our store. This demo console is there to convince buyers (and sales personnel like me) to buy this magic box. They complain anyway (console too big, too loud, too expensive...) but when showing them this game, it's simply impossible to sell them a Xbox. I ain't conviced either. Dreamcast owners can laugh at this and get MSR cheap :)

The Good
Well the goons down at Microsoft have done it again. PGR was the second game I got for my box, I wanted to get a Gran Turismo like game and I think PGR will do. Although you can't buy cars like you can in GT its still a great game. I'm liking the idea of Kudos points; it puts a more arcade-like spin on the whole game. Another great thing about PGR is you can listen to your own tracks whilst you race. If you've recorded songs onto your X-Box you can put then into the game under "User Radio" its very different racing around London with Frank Sinatra blazing out of the radio.

The Bad
It does get quite hard, I've completed Halo numerous times now, but PGR is still a work in progress, I'll admit it to you, I’m stuck. Well and truly. It takes time to perfect driving techniques, finding the perfect balance between style and speed, knowing when one is more important than the other, and well, I'm still on a learning curve, a very old, but progressive learning curve. Apart from that it’s a sound game.

The Bottom Line
Project Gotham Racing is another great game for the X-Box, amazing graphics, music to your own tastes, cars to die for, and plenty of tracks.