This is a stunning arcade racer but with lots of class.
You've probably already read Gamespot's review and several others so I will keep most of the rest of this review in point form to quickly outline the pros and cons.
Pros:
>> Graphics consist of extremely detailed, true to life environments for the race track locations. New York Time's Square has the actual stores and signage you will see in real life...even MacDonald's! Tokyo at night is a glitz of neon and bright lights and billboards all down the long stretches of highways that just might distract you enough to slam right into a wall.
>> The game lets you walk around garages housing all the cars you've bought and splashes them down with the most beautiful lighting effects you've ever seen.
>> The cockpit view besides being an awesome graphical showpiece helps to immerse you into the feeling of really driving one of the world's most powerful sports cars and you can even see bits of dust collect on the window!
>> Very consistent smooth frame rate with only very slight amounts of slow-down.
>> Healthy dose of features and options for different play modes and a fairly long career mode.
>> Many different types of unique exotic cars to choose from that each have their own distinct nuances and handling characteristics making it fun to try and master each one.
>> Five difficulty modes that make the game as easy or as hard as you want and the ability to change difficulty any time you want.
>> PGR3 has just the right amount of arcade vs. realism in the physics so the game is challenging yet doesn't get boring like in Ridge Racer 6.
>> Play time mode lets you jump into any race with any car and show off the game to friends or play multiplayer without having to unlock everything first.
>> Online career mode does a great job of measuring your skill and matching you up with fair competition. Playing online can be very fun and rewarding depending on who you play with and it really extends the replay value on this game.
>> Entering a race online is very easy and usually fast.
>> The sound effects are loud and realistic and the car's engine notes are varied and unique to each car. Music is surprisingly good and even has some classical in there which believe it or not is somehow appropriate!
Cons:
>> Apparently Xbox 360 is not the end of jaggies like Peter Moore said because this game has noticeable jaggies in garage mode and even some while racing.
>> Although the game is in high definition and looks very clear, there is still aliasing and texture "crawling" of distant objects as they move closer while racing.
>> Even though the cars look very realistic, they seem to be missing some advanced lighting effects and texturing during races which makes them look a little plain and flat looking.
>> Lower than expected polygon count on some car models.
>> Not much variety of race types so it makes offline career a little repetitive.
>> Online career mode does not have enough different race venues to choose from and only a few of them are popular among other players.
>> When playing in online career mode there is no way to enter the same race again with the same players for rematches which is a real shame because sometimes you have so much fun with certain players and want to stay with them longer than one race.
>> Some of the race events online take a long time to fill the lobby requiring you to twiddle your thumbs for maybe 3-4 minutes before the race starts.
>> The warning "game experience online may change" is so painfully true because there is no telling from race to race who you will be going up against. Most of the time there will always be one or two people who just want to wreck you and generally annoy the other racers making it very frustrating at times.
>> This may be more of a preference issue but I do not like the online ranking system. Depending on how you raced, you're score is uploaded and compared to everyone else who plays the game. But instead of it ranking you between 1 - the best player in the world to the worst player, it divides the ranking into leagues so that league 1 is from 1-1000 top players and league 2 is from 1000-2000 top players. I just don't like this ranking system because I want to know exactly where I'm at on the totem pole.
>> To be competitive online you are almost always forced to use a Ferrari since they tend to be the top overall performing cars, used by 95% of players, but I wished the developers could have implemented some kind of balancing for online play so that people could choose the cars they like but still have a chance to beat a Ferrari.
Overall, PGR3 is a solid semi-sim/arcade racer that has its own unique style that should satisfy most racing fans. Hardcore racing sim fans will be disappointed and might want to wait for the next Forza game. For most people though, this is the game to have for fast paced online racing action but has a bit less replay value if you're not on Xbox Live. I would recommend this game as a definite buy.