User Rating: 10 | Project Gotham Racing 2 XBOX
Racing games simply DO NOT get any better then Project Gotham Racing 2 on Xbox. I've had this game since it was released way back in November 2003 and I fell in love with it! Everything about the game is exceptional, from the remarkable graphics to the 8 player online racing via Xbox Live; no racer can even come close. Ok, now onto the review. Lets begin with gameplay shall we? Game play --- Without game play, it doesn’t matter how good the graphics are, the game would fall short. Well, we are in good fortune, as PGR2 has some of the best game play in a racer ever developed. The cars handle with a simulation/ arcade feel to them. Its not Gran Turismo and its not Rallisport Challenge, its about in the middle and strikes a good balance overall. Most of the cars in general feel different, you can tell the variation right away if you are driving a Mini Cooper S or a Porsche 911 GT1. There are a few different racing modes in Project Gotham Racing 2. The core of the game; where you earn the most kudos to buy new cars, is in the Kudos World Series mode. Then there is the usual time Trial, Circuit Challenge, and car Challenge modes. Cone Challenges is the unique mode where you have to drive your car through a bunch of set cones on a track. Going past each cone makes a “tick” sound and keeps the Kudos Combo going. It’s greatly addictive and awfully challenging. Then comes the online mode. Without even mentioning the online mode, PGR2 has enough replay value in its single player alone to keep most gamers playing for months. But Xbox Live about Quadruples that replay value and more! Its quite simple to get into a race, you choose your Gamertag, or create a new one if you don’t have an Xbox Live account. You then have the usual Xbox Live options; Quick match, Optimatch, Create a game, Scoreboards, downloadable content etc. The online mode supports up to 8 players, and is pretty much lag free for the most part of the time. All players in the room can chat at once, but what makes the online mode so addicting is the advanced ranking system. Basically, it works like this; you race, earn kudos, and once you get a certain amount of kudos, you rank up. It makes the online mode exceedingly addicting. In addition to Xbox Live, the game supports System Link, and up to 4 players via split screen on one Xbox console. PGR2 is of course, like most recently released Microsoft games, is Xbox Live “aware” enabled, which means you can be signed into XBL when you are playing single player, and get friend invites, which may seem like a small feature, but is cool non the less. PGR2 has 400 + scoreboards, as soon as you finish any event in kudos world series, time trial, Cone challenges etc., it uploads your scores to the scoreboards for that certain event. Even more, you can upload “ghosts” of other players, and view them or race against them. Stuck on a certain track? Upload a ghost of one of the top 10 players and see how they raced the course. PGR2 records everything in your user profile; from the amount of time you played the game, to your favourite car used, to the average amount of kudos earned in each event. The choice of cars in PGR2 is somewhat staggering. You have a huge amount to pick from (as of now, there’s 118 cars in PGR2, 16 cars were released via Xbox Live, which you have to purchase, the game only ships with 102 by default). Everything from a Ford focus, to a Mercedes CLK GTR and to a BMW X5 SUV, this game has it all. You unlock cars with kudos tokens, which you earn while ranking up in single player or on Xbox Live. You then take your tokens, and go into the “showroom”, where you can walk around in first person and view and test-drive every car in the game, you then pick the car you want and buy it with your earned tokens. The game has an enormous amount of tracks, other racers simply cannot compare. There are 107 tracks in the game as of this writing (15 tracks were released via Xbox Live, and two cities; Paris and LA). With 13 cities in the game, all having unique tracks and diverse challenges. Some tracks might take one minute to complete, others may make seven; you can choose whatever you want in PGR2, the game gives you the option of what you want. Overall, the cities are pretty bare. You wont see much going on, aside from a sky train moving around on some levels (Chicago) and a few birds flying around in the air. But what is most amazing is how much detail is given to everything in the game, but ill that with more detail later. There are four different views when you are driving (3rd person close, 3rd person far, 1st person drivers view, and a 1st person view that is close to the pavement.) My personal favourite was the 3rd person close view, but you get the best sensation of speed with the 1st person views. PGR2 does feature car damage – to some extent. When you smash into guardrails, or other cars, you can see dents in the car, windows smash, license plates go flying off, hoods start to pop up. It does a good job of making it more realistic, but it could be a lot better, other racers have done a much better job with car damage (most notable; the impressive Rallisport Challenge 2 which came out May 2004). You could describe the AI in the game with one word – aggressive. You wont see it so much on Bronze or Steel challenges, but with the higher difficulties, the computer cars will try and push you into guardrails every chance they can get. You can merely do the same for them, so it works out good, but its sort of a hassle sometimes when you are using a slower car, and you are barely staying ahead of them, and they come up and crush you into a wall and speed off. Graphics --- Graphically, only one game beats PGR2 and that its Rallisport Challenge 2, but this isn’t about that rally game. To put it simply, Project Gotham 2 looks freaking astounding, The car models are purely insane; the amount of detail is crazy. Everything is so smooth, using Xbox’s full screen anti analyzing of course. The reflections in the cars are the best I’ve ever seen, when you are driving through a city, reflections of the buildings, trees, other cars can be seen in your own car, just like in real life. You can ACCUALY see the trees swaying in the wind in the reflection in your car; it’s absolutely out of this world! The bump mapping used on the pavement is the finest ever seen in any game ever created. The road looks so genuine you could touch it. Look up at the sky, and you will see the beautiful clouds and sunlight, not to mention the sunlight reflects off your car too. There’s even birds flying around, not to mention you can in fact follow the birds around the track if you wanted to, with your car. The amount of detail is staggering. Wait, there is more. When you are in the showroom, you can look out the window, and see trees swaying in the soft wind, and in some parts of the showroom, you can see a huge field with Sheep moving and windmills moving in the wind. Did I mention the game is doing this all at a rock solid 30 frames per second? This game pushes the Xbox, don’t deny that fact. The game even has HDTV 420p support, for users of high definition televisions. Sound --- The game has the normal car sounds you would hear in any quality racer, each car sounds a bit different. Tires Screech when you turn hard, all the little details are there. PGR2 has an overwhelming selection of music. Wherever you are into Techno, Rock, or rap, the game has something to suit your tastes. It has over 200 licensed songs by today’s hottest artists. A cool feature is the “radio” option, the game actually has in game DJ’s, which give you info on the music, among other things, but for the most part makes it sound like a real radio. It also of course, has a CD player, which you can customize with your own customs soundtracks from the Xbox HDD. You can even push down on the right thumb stick while you are racing, and a little audio CD player will come up at the top of screen (like a CD player in a car), where you can switch songs, or turn up or down the volume of music. For all you sound freaks, the game does support Dolby Digital 5.1. Overall --- If you are looking for a great racing game on Xbox, then nothing is better then Project Gotham Racing 2. Bizarre Creations has done a brilliant job with this game, quite simply one of the top 3 best racers ever created, if not the #1. If you enjoy racers, and you don’t own PGR2, then you are simply a fool. This is a must own game, its fairly simple as that. It’s probably going to be one of the best racers for years to come (at least until PGR3 comes out) With the retail price of the game at $29.99 USD (as of 7/11/2004), you have to excuse not to own PGR2. What more could you ask in a game? 
