Got The Cool, Got The Cool Shoe Shine

When I got my Xbox last January, I had only Halo and SSX Tricky at first. My father was one for racing games and heard about Project Gotham Racing (PGR). Not to long after he went out and bought PGR. I didn't care about playing it to much as I was still hooked and Halo (and I still am almost 4 months later). Now that I have beaten Halo and done almost everything there is to do, pretty beaten SSX Tricky and got bored with my 3 other games, I started to play PGR. I was confused for a while as I was hard to get into it, but that didn't last long. PGR is one of the most unique racing games I've ever played, as most of the game isn't about racing. The reward system for winning and doing certain tricks, called kudos, is pretty cool. The music is awesome and your allowed to use your own songs. Project Gothem Racing is definitely the best racer for Xbox, and one of the best racers of all time.

Your House Might Be In PGR

I meant what I said. This game features real parts of four different cities. Many parts of New York, San Francisco, Tokyo and London are tracks in this games. Along the sides you'll see many real buildings which are some peoples houses. People who have never played the game might be saying, "only four courses?" Well junior, I said there are many parts to each city. All together, there's over 200 tracks to race in. So, that makes at least 50 different track for each city. Some of the tracks are similar to others as they may be right next to each other. No matter the fact of the tracks being close by each other, and maybe not so different, they all are differently shaped with different objects. You won't get bored quickly with all of that.

Kudos

Bizarre uses them as sort of points in PGR. You unlock new cars, tracks and difficulties by earning kudos. You earn meager kudos for doing tricks like spinning, getting air, overtaking a position and two-wheeling. Linking them together can rack of the kudos to a pretty big amount, but the real kudos comes from maximizing slides with the handbrake and bonus kudos earned just by completing the track. If you do not complete the track and fail the objective, the kudos you earned on that run will be gone. It's not to hard to get over 1000 kudos per race, so don't be suprised if you get that high. I don't know how you do it, but you get jokers throughout the game. If you use a joker before a run and complete the track, you total kudos score will be doubled which got me 1404 kudos the most. They are pretty rare, so use them wisely.

These $20,000 Heavy Pieces Of Metal Can Take Some Pain...

And they do! There is a total of 25 cars in PGR which ain't as much as GT3, but is still a good amount. The cars power varies in handling, acceleration and speed. You can't build up your cars in this like in GT3 and really can only choose the paint job. Cars include, Ferrari F50, The New Beetle, Porsche Boxster S, Corvette ZO6 and many more. You start off with only 3 cars and earn more with kudos.

Four Ways To Play

PGR includes four modes (five including multiplayer).

Quick Race is the basic race. Six cars will be placed on the track to see who gets through the laps first, simple enough? You can earn kudos in this mode.

Time Attack is where you race through the course to see how fast you can finish. It's basically a practice mode for the difficult races.

Arcade mode is where you have to earn a medal by passing the given number of kudos for that medal. You can also win kudos in this mode.

Kudos Challenge is the main mode in the game. In the chosen track you must complete the challenge which can be things like, one on one races, 6 car races, overtaking challenges and hot lap challenges. Some of these are fairly hard and may take a tries to beat. Jokers are playable here and kudos are earned for wins.

Graphics

PGR has great graphics which definitely show the power of the Xbox! The cars look so real and clean. The buildings look good. The rain actually looks real. Pop up is hardly noticeable if noticeable at all. The damage done to the cars by crashing can is shown by dents and busted lights. The backgrounds look a little flat sometimes but isn't a big deal. The graphics are great and this certainly couldn't be done on PS2.

Sound & Music

The sounds are good. The crashing and bumps sound as real as life. It's all good there. Now the music is something to talk about. You listen to your cars radio which has real stations with real DJ's from the cities that you drive in. Bands like Kittie, Saliva, The Gorillaz and The Chemical Brothers are all in the soundtrack to PGR. Not a fan of anything in the soundtrack but to lazy to hit the mute button on the remote controller? Well, this is one of the few games that use the feature to use your own songs from your hard disk. This feature is really cool and should be used in more games.

Final Comments

If you have an Xbox and are a fan of racers, Project Gotham racing is for you. Being one of the Xbox's launch games, it's still a hit today.