Project Gotham Racing 2 is as good as it gets.
PGR2 is actually the third instalment in a series that began back on the Sega Dreamcast with a game called Metropolis Street Racer. MSR was praised for its beautiful graphics, realistic driving (in real cities, no less), and its introduction of a ‘kudos’ system, where you gain kudos points for driving with style. Where MSR didn’t succeed was in its intense difficulty level and very limited car selection. Still, it was considered by many to be the best driving game on Dreamcast.
When Xbox was released, Project Gotham Racing was one of the launch titles. The graphics were outstanding, and the kudos system had been refined. The game received excellent reviews, but was not without its shortcomings. The difficulty level was quite high, and though more cars had been added that became available as you gained more kudos points, you had to be an excellent player indeed if you ever wanted to drive a Ferrari.
Project Gotham Racing 2 was released at the end of 2003, and managed to fix the issues with the previous titles, in addition to adding many more cars and tracks. In fact, I consider PGR2 to be the best all-around driving game currently available. The premise is you drive around tracks within real cities (more than 10 cities, including Chicago, Stockholm, Hong Kong, Sydney, Yokohama, and Barcelona), racing with style in order to gain kudos points, which will unlock new tracks and vehicles, and allow you to buy new cars. You earn kudos by sliding, drafting other cars, racing clean, and catching air. This may sound easy, but you will also lose kudos by hitting walls and cones, lowering your score. Many events require you to finish with a certain number of kudos points, and scoring high can become an art form. It’s possible to gain massive kudos by performing combos through chaining together drifts, drafts, and other manoeuvres. This is somewhat reminiscent of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, and is part of what makes Project Gotham Racing 2 highly addictive. Rather than just trying to finish first, you are rewarded for perfecting your driving technique, racing the 'perfect' line, and drifting whenever you can.
The main section of the game is divided up into fourteen series’, each of which having a theme based on a vehicle type and set in a particular city. You start out with slower categories, such as the Compact Sports, and eventually progress to the Extreme and Ultimate car classes. Each series consists of several challenges, which in addition to regular street races, include such tasks as cone challenges (where you gain points for making it through all of the cone gates while racing and drifting around the tracks), speed cameras (where you have to hit above a minimum speed on a section of track), and time trials. In order to progress from one series to the next, you must complete each task earning a minimum number of kudos. Every series category has several new cars to choose from, some of which are available by default, others you will need to buy with tokens that you obtain by earning kudos. There are over 100 vehicles in the game, which range from sport compacts like the Mini Cooper S and Honda Civic Type-R, to SUVs such as the Mercedes ML55 and Porsche Cayenne Turbo, to muscle cars like the Pontiac GTO and Mustang Fastback 2+2, to Pacific muscle like the Toyota Supra and Nissan Skyline, to exotics such as the Saleen S7 and Ferrari Enzo. There are so many diverse vehicles to choose from, it’s a car-lovers dream! There is even a showroom where you can examine the cars in each class and even take them for a test-drive! The only thing missing is the ability to modify the cars, but with the selection of cars available, you probably won’t miss it.
In the previous game, earning enough kudos to progress and unlock the better cars was extremely difficult, and was my major complaint. In PGR2, this issue has been addressed by having different difficulty levels for each task (steel, bronze, silver, gold, and platinum). Completing an event with a steel medal is extremely easy, while finishing with platinum can be next to impossible. You can move on to the next series with only all steel medals, but you won’t be able to afford as many cars.
Graphically, PGR2 is extremely impressive, with the cars and cities each realistically modelled off their real-life counterparts. Vehicles take visible damage as you run into things, and some cars, like the Ferrari Enzo, actually have spoilers that rise as your speed increases. The lighting during both day and night races is particularly well done, as is the appearance of rain. The cities don’t have any traffic to contend with, or pedestrians walking about, but these elements would take away from the style of the game.
In addition to the excellent single player experience, PGR2 also includes online play via Xbox Live, where you can race against (and trash-talk) up to seven other players. There are also two downloadable ‘Booster Packs’ that were released last summer, each of which includes a new city (Paris and Long Beach) and several additional cars (including the new Volkswagen Nardo and Ferrari 612 Scaglietti).
While I expect Gran Turismo 4 to raise the bar once it’s released, for the time being, Project Gotham Racing 2 is as good as it gets. It easily earns a 9.7 out of 10. If you’ve ever wanted to race a Mercedes CLK-GTR against a Ferrari F50 on the streets of Hong Kong, this is your game!