Beautiful
Gameplay
PGR3 allows players to partake in a career mode in both online and offline modes. You also have the option to play quick races, but to really make progress in this game and score some new rides, you should definitely play the career mode. During the offline career mode, the player begins by purchasing a car. The great thing about PGR3 that made it intriguing from the get go was that you didn't have to win a bunch of races to get yourself a fast, fun car. From the outset you have enough money to choose between a dozen cars ranging from Ferraris to Fords to Nobles. Technically, the overall number of vehicles in the game has been reduced from previous PGR games, but the ability to jump right into a high end vehicle and move your way upwards to even faster and cooler cars goes a long way in making up for the reduced number of vehicles. That said, there are still about eighty vehicles to eventually choose from, so the variety is still significant. Whatever car you purchase to start off with, you begin your career by entering a tournament. Tournaments are usually broken into three different races, or events, usually street races against the AI. Sometimes an individual event may actually be a challenge instead of a race against the CPU; for example you might have to do a speed challenge, whereby you must get to a nearby checkpoint and blaze through it going at least a certain speed like 125 MPH, for example. Upon completing each race or challenge in a tournament, you unlock more cars available for purchase (including concept cars). Additionally you open up other tournaments at other locales. There are five different locales in this game, including Tokyo, Las Vegas, New York, London, and the challenging Nurburgring. Each of these locations not only looks different, but also brings its own unique challenges to the table.
Before starting each challenge within a tournament, you can visit your garage (eventually garages later in the game) and peruse your vehicles. This turns out to be a fine way for the 360 to flex a little muscle; when you enter your garage, you enter a first person mode that allows you to walk around your car and check out it's nicely rendered exterior. Depending on the car type, you can also take a peek inside. It would have been great to have been able to look under the hood or actually sit in the car and just looked around. Instead you can only walk around the outside of the car, but it's still a cool feature. When you finally decide to quit gawking at the pretty cars in your garage, you pick a vehicle to take to the next challenge. Selection is key to victory and I quickly discovered that a car with excellent acceleration was the best suited for me for most purposes. The CPU vehicles will change depending on what car you choose, usually pitting you against five other cars a couple that are technically better than yours, a couple that might be the same model as yours, and another that isn't as powerful as what you have. Each street race is usually three or four laps and the goal is to finish at least third out of six. After you get comfortable with the 360 controller and one of the preset control schemes, this isn't too difficult to do fairly easily on Medium skill level. You can actually adjust the skill level between five different levels (medium being right in the middle) before the start of any race. The most important aspect of racing in PGR3 was handling sharp turns; the physics in the game are pretty lenient, but that still doesn't mean you can power slide into any turn with ease, at least not at first. Each car is rated on Acceleration, Grip, Braking, and Top Speed, and the difference in the various models comes into play turning these turns. Getting the hang of sliding into a turn and accelerating out with of it is one of the most challenging but absolutely necessary elements for success in PGR3. With success comes victory in the tournaments and a lot of cash rewards that you can use to purchase other cars. You don't have to worry about repairing your vehicles, as there are no real damage effects to the game. If you collide into another racer or a wall, your car shows a bit of damage, visually, but the performance of the car is unchanged (except for the adjustment in speed during the actual crash). In the next challenge, your car is restored again, with no input from the player or loss of money. PGR3 also prevents any sort of modification to vehicles, too. Unlike a Gran Turismo 4 or Forza Motorsport, there is no tweaking element to the game which might disappoint some gamers. It can be said then that PGR3 continues the focus of its predecessors, allowing players to enjoy the coolest, fastest cars on the planet with a favorable physics engine and little to no punishment for driving aggressively or dangerously. In fact, nudging or undercutting opponents during sharp turns is often the best way to get ahead of them. The courses are often curvy enough and the vehicles you are racing against are powerful enough that you often don't get the chance to out run a car in a straightaway. CPU vehicles will be as aggressive however, so you have to really watch yourself on crowded turns. Getting pinned up against the wall in a turn or spun out by another car is usually enough to ensure that you are not going to finish in the top three; depending, of course, on a lot of factors. Getting caught back up to the pack and taking over other vehicles is most often a task that requires a few laps and a few minutes--things you rarely ever have in PGR3.
The offline career mode took the better part of ten hours to complete. The challenge was satisfying, but the level of variety and depth to the individual tournaments felt a bit too thin. To remedy that, you can partake in the online career mode. In the online career mode, there is no set endpoint for your career. Using a complex and largely functional matching service, PGR3 will pit you against other players on Live with similar ping times and skill levels. Your performance is part of a large ranking system that you can view anytime. The network code behind PGR3 proved to be solid, allowing for smooth racing that could be mistaken for single player in terms of fluidity. I think that most gamers will find the majority of their time tied up in online races.
PGR3 continues the Kudos System, whereby performing 360s or taking a sharp turn particularly well will earn you Kudos points. The points are tallied as you race and are basically just a reward or feedback system for performing difficult and not so difficult actions. I didn't find the Kudos System to be really something I was trying to cater too, except for the challenges where you had to earn a certain Kudos level in a certain amount of time; other than those times, I was far more focused on the racing itself as I didn't really find any value in increasing my Kudos points. There wasn't really any positive feedback or reasoning for trying to increase the Kudos count in my opinion; still, it's a staple of the series and some racers might find it rewarding. Personally, I prefer similar, but different, elements like the Bounty system found in Need For Speed Most Wanted.
Changing gears a bit now to a new feature that PGR3 brings to the table, the cockpit view. This is probably my favorite part of the game and something I really hope to see more of in future racing games. We've all played game with a view from the driver’s seat, behind the windshield and all--but never has it been this good. Players can use the right thumbstick to turn their head inside the car. You can look at the passenger seat, for example, or down at the console or look up and out of the windshield to marvel at a skyscraper. The interior detail on the vehicles is very impressive and does in fact change to match whatever car you are driving. The best part about the cockpit view is the ability to look at your rearview and side mirrors and at vehicles to your left and right. It was very cool to be racing along in cockpit mode and then use the right thumbstick to glance down and to the left at my driver side mirror. The mirrors update in real time, and it's really quite thrilling to have to take your eyes off of the road for a moment to look back at your mirror. With most vehicles, you have to consciously move the right thumbstick to look at your mirror; Bizarre Creations did a great job in making sure that you can't see your side mirrors without forcing you to look using your thumbstick. Some vehicles, like the Ariel Atom (which quickly became one of my favorites in the game with its insane acceleration) is built in such a way that you can view your single mirror without having to move your thumbstick. So, there are those special cases, but for the most part you will actually need to move your thumbstick to use your side mirrors. Another fine aspect of the cockpit mode is just how different things look and sound inside of the cockpit. Each car looks different on the inside, a commendable attention to detail. The sounds of your engine and those of nearby racers sounds really cool too, really believable. As you race and your car changes speeds like going into a turn, you can actually see the light jolting action of your racer inside the cockpit. This is a really fun mode that took a bit of getting used to at the outset for me, but was well worth the initial learning curve.
I mentioned the AI and courses briefly earlier, and I'd actually like to expound on them a bit more now. Overall, I was pleased with the level of AI exhibited by the CPU racers. In terms of wrecking into things or other cars, I really didn't see any of that at all. It's not that the AI doesn't make mistakes though, but they are at least more believable and "understandable" mistakes than running into walls and things. About the only mistakes I really saw out of the AI on Medium skill were the generous gaps they would leave on some turns, giving you the ability to squeeze in there, maybe bump them a bit, and get the edge. I'm not complaining mind you, as most of the time you only really get one or two good chances to pass a car during the course of a race, so I'll take any chance I can get. At the same time, I would definitely describe the AI as unforgiving; if during the course of a race you ever get spun around or come to a dead stop due to a crash of some kind, you can just about kiss your chances of winning goodbye, or even finishing in the top three for that matter. The courses do not lend themselves to catching up, nor do the AI racers make any kind of major mistake to allow you that chance to catch up. Most of the time, if you make a mistake early on in a race, unless the circumstances are unusual, you are better off restarting the race right away. Doing so unfortunately takes a good ten to twelve seconds as the game has to do some reloading.
As far as the courses, there aren't that many in the game; just five locales and the ability to go through a course in reverse mode. It's amazing how different a track can be in reverse mode, but it would have been nice to see more variety. You can add some spice by racing in night or overcast conditions, however. You can also create your own tracks in the in-game track editor. Something else I couldn't help but notice about the courses is how static they are. If you take a look at the environment around you as you race, you will notice how incredible static it is. I saw a plane fly over in the London track I believe it was and you can see the race watchers wave their arms some on the sidelines--but the level of immersion and realism is sharply reduced by completely immobile trees and dramatically static surroundings. The courses are also strictly linear, with no possibly alternative routes. Granted, this isn't a free roaming kind of racer like Burnout or Need For Speed, but I felt it worth mentioning.
PGR3 also features something called GothamTV, which is something you can check out via the Main Menu. GothamTV allows you to view screenshots you captured during races (cool feature for a console game) and to also view high scores.
One very persistent and important element to racing titles is the HUD. PGR3’s HUD comes across as a little busy too me, and I feel like it takes too much screen real estate. It’s also not very good looking, for more picky gamers. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if you could make some changes to the HUD but you can only turn off the mirrors and enable full zoom on the map. All of the information is presented in large text in the four corners of the screen. The tachometer is disagreeable; it’s situated in the bottom right hand of the screen, which is fine, but instead of the familiar dial look, you get a horizontal gray bar that fills up red as your engine revs up. Not only would a nice, standard, tachometer worked better (I like to use manual transmission), but it would have also taken up less screen real estate. In the upper right side of the screen you can see your current Kudos points; I would have preferred the ability to disable it or only show up when you are earning Kudos points. Something else I noticed that might irk you is how the HUD can actually cover the side mirror or mirrors on some cars. Say you are driving and take a turn, it’s a close race or you just want to be able to sneak a peek at your side mirror; usually this isn’t a problem, but on some cars, the HUD can actually overlap the mirror and render is useless. So while the HUD by default is pretty bad, things are made worse by your inability to change things.
I'd like to mention the actual menu system in the game. The menu system, the design thereof that is, is really poor. This might sound a little picky, but the menu is really bad enough to make it worth mentioning. The biggest problem with it is the layout; when choosing tournaments for example, you use the right d-pad button. Inside of a tournament, when you're choosing a challenge, you actually press up on the d-pad to view the available challenges within your current tournament. There is no clear on screen indicator or any reason to think that pressing up is the thing to do. The menu layout is just kind of jarring in that sort of way. It also felt very limiting, almost like it was zoomed in too much. By that I mean that unless you were currently hovering over an option, you couldn't very well read it or see what other choices were "nearby." Again, for example, in the challenge selection screen. You can only see what challenge you currently have highlighted. To see any others at all, it's strange enough you have to press Up, but it would have been better to be able to see the nearby screen elements without having to use the controller--like a flow chart or tournament bracket design would have been much better. This also comes into play when you are looking at your cars. In one menu you have the choice to sell a car; this function is limited because you can only sell the car you currently have selected. To select a car, you have to back out of that menu, choose to change your car, pick your car, then go back into the Sell menu--being able to just go to "Sell" and then pick your car from there, regardless of what car you currently have selected 'in the background,' would have been better design.
Graphics
Visually, like any 360 game, PGR3 is going to look better on HD. Even without HD, PGR3 is a fine looking racer with nicely rendered cars that are animated nicely and behave impressively, even if not amazingly, well under various light conditions. The color palette seems to be oddly limited to about twelve colors, however. Most cars that you buy you can't even change the color thereof (much less tinker with the engine, etc). Since games have long since had a full color palette, it was odd for a next gen title like this to be so limiting. Still, the cars, no matter what the color or the make, looked good, inside and out. Not only are they just technically rendered well, they are detailed to look like their counterparts in real life. The best case in point of interior detail is what you see on the inside of the car when you’re in cockpit mode. Speaking of cockpit mode, the lighting is particularly nice when sitting behind the wheel. If you're in a night race, for example, and your headlights are close enough to a wall or other object, you’re treated to a nice glare effect or reflection on your windshield. Likewise, during the course of a race you might experience some cool dynamic lighting from the sun pelting your steering wheel as you duck under a bridge or behind a building and then come cruising back out into the open. These things are nice and if this were on the original Xbox, it'd be very special; but for a next gen with the 360's power, this game ultimately under whelms, graphically at least. To that end it would have been especially nice to see more damage models and more diverse lighting effects. And I do think that part of the static feeling and appearance of the courses has to do with a lack of attention to graphical detail. It isn't uncommon to see the same textures and graphical nuggets, like trees, be used repeatedly and heavily.
In playing this game, even online, I haven't experienced any bad clipping or other graphical snafus like framerate drops, and that is certainly commendable.
Audio
In any racing game, I always pay particular attention to the sounds of the engines. I'm pleased to say the engine sounds in PGR3 are awesome. The variety of engine sounds for the different cars and engine types is great and very noticeable. All of the different sounds you might expect to hear from an engine, from stressed to smooth sounding gear changes, are here and sound really good. If you're like me you turn down the soundtrack in any racing game a few notches just to enjoy the roar of the engines. Speaking of the soundtrack, it isn't terribly inspiring but there are some good electronica tracks in there. You can also, as with any 360 game, play your own music in the game. One problem I had with PGR3 that I hadn't yet had with any other game was how the in game music would not come back on after I turned off my music from the dashboard; I actually ended up restarting the game to get the music to kick back in as nothing else I did had any effect at all. Despite that oddity, the soundtrack in the game is pretty good. There are a variety of music genres that you can choose between. I think the electronica tracks with a lot of thumping bass work best for this game; the rock and alternative tracks are usually very underwhelming while Aphex Twin and the few other electronic tracks seem to fit a whole lot better. One track in particular I have to mention is the track that plays after you win a race or challenge; it sounds great and it's really fitting. I'm not sure who it's by, but it is a great techno/electronic track with a very repetitive but awesome bass.
PGR3 was also the first game I have experienced on consoles that allowed you to adjust the sound output depending on where your speakers are physically positioned in your room. This is done through the Sound options; the Sound options looks like something out of a Creative Labs program, for those of you who have seen it on a PC. What you have is basically a top down view of a generic room and you use your controller to slide your speaker configuration around. So maybe your rear speakers, if you have them, are at whatever angle behind you; using your controller and the 'map' on screen, you can adjust things to match up to what you actually have for your particularly gaming environment.
Depth
PGR3 is a deep racing game. While not as tremendously deep as Turismo or Forza, PGR3 does offer a ton of cars, around 80, and the ability to create your own tracks, where the sheer number of tracks you can create is essentially infinite. The Kudos system, as well as the 360 Achievements you can unlock, add some of depth, too. The single player career is nice, but seems fairly short once it's done and you don't really have much reason to go back again and play because you earn enough money throughout your career the first time to really get any car you want, even if it means selling some along the way. The real depth to this game is no secret, its Live play. As with any Live game, finding serious, decent players is always a challenge. As this game gets more popularity I would expect the more serious players to stick around and hopefully the number of jerks will dissipate into another game. There is, fortunately, the option for System Link play, and split screen horizontal action too. In the end, you should decide how you plan on playing this title--just single or local play or on Live--and decide for yourself if it will be deep enough for you.
Fun Factor
Despite its short offline career mode and other aforementioned concerns, PGR3 is still a very enjoyable racing game. I personally had a thirty to sixty minute learning curve in getting used to the feel of the game and the controls, but it was still fun and obviously a lot more fun after I got over those hurdles. For the best enjoyment, I fully recommend going with a manual transmission and doing the cockpit view; don’t forget to lay down some of your favorite tracks and crank up the engine effects, too. The AI will frustrate at times, as it seems one mistake can cost you an entire race, but give some time and experience you get to learn the ins and outs of your car on the different courses and you start to look to create more opportunities for yourself and worry less about screwing up. For example, in my first few hours of play in this game, I really had to make an effort to do a better job in sliding through sharp turns. Doing so took away some of my ability to make some moves on the leaders, and so I rarely finished first. Now, with some experience behind me, those turns are now taken as opportunities to turn the tide of the race in my favor.
As with the depth of this game, you are likely to have the most fun playing multiplayer. There isn’t a terrible lot to the single player mode after playing through the career and trying out your favorite cars, so playing split screen, via System Link, or on Live, are your only other alternatives to increase the replay value and fun factor of this title. Well, except for the track editor, which will be a boon to some players, and forgettable to others.
Overall Comment
While being a fine racing title and probably being the best PGR game in the series, PGR3 left me feeling a little disappointed. PGR3 just doesn’t feel like a next gen game. It certainly looks like one on an HDTV, and the cockpit view is really cool, although you don’t need 360 hardware to do that. Were this on the original Xbox, this would have been a remarkable game. As it stands, PGR3 is a game that seems to be just barely above original Xbox specs, and something I can barely see calling ‘next gen.’ Despite that, it’s still a fine racing game. That said, if you enjoy the PGR series, give this one a serious look, it won’t disappoint you. Furthermore, if you are a 360 owner looking for a great racing game, this should be at the top of your list to rent or check out in some way. Right now the only other options are Ridge Racer 6 and Need For Speed Most Wanted anyway, two games that are significantly different than PGR3. In the end, consider what you want in a 360 racer right now and weigh these options.