Project gotham racing review by vM - vrOOOOOM!
MSR was quite a triumph on the Dreamcast, after being in development for 2 years the final game was released, bugged to hell (the kudos system not functioning correctly) and a newer, **** version was released in the same packaging a month or so later. MSR was a classic racer, featuring many different cars to unlock, city tracks featuring London, San Francisco and Tokyo (sound familiar?) and the Kudos system, and this is my one problem with PGR, it’s the SAME GAME. PGR has been spruced up with 65 new music tracks from such artists as Gorillaz, Chemical Bros and much more, none of the cheesy Richard Jaques (gawd bless ‘im) rubbish that populated MSR. Each city also has their own set of Radio Stations that continually mix and match Music from the PGR CD, London actually has Capital FM and XFM, along with one called Digital Radio (presumably fake) and the virtual CD system that allows you to play your own selection of music from the PGR CD – meaning you’ll hardly ever hear the same song twice. The Track design has been largely kept from the original, adding a new city, New York and a few new tracks to each district of each city – meaning there are a fair few to play around with and they’re all incredibly detailed. Being a Londoner I can tell you how much Bizarre have worked on the London levels, and I assume the rest are just as accurate. It’s fun playing the game with a mate and hearing comments like “that’s where that club is” and “we were there last week” etc, and apart from taking out brand names of shops/theatres etc it’s all very accurate. The game styles consist of Quick Race, Arcade Race, Kudos Challenge and Medal Challenge (unlocked after 5 hours of play) along with your usual Time Trial and Multiplayer options. The game is incredibly hard, gaining some of the cars means getting gold medals in all the quick races, virtually impossible normal races that require you to come 3rd, 2nd or 1st to get bronze, silver or gold. Arcade is a bit different, requiring you to get medals by scoring a set amount of kudos by skilfully driving round a course of cones on different tracks, performing power slides, jumps, speed gates etc to gain the required kudos for a medal, kudos challenge is a mixture of the 2 (without the cones) giving you a ladder of tournaments, each consisting of a few different challenges – lap time, kudos, overtake and general races all come into the equation. The difficulty of these races will make sure you’re playing PGR for months (unless you’re some leet hardcore racer freak) just so you can unlock the different levels and the ‘oh so beautiful cars,’ and what cars they are!
You see, one of the main problems with MSR (along with the dodgy kudos system and the appalling music) were the cars – not that there was a lack of cars, or that they handled badly… but they felt out of place among the beautifully rendered world, they looked dull and relatively 2D. Bizarre’s answer to this in PGR was to make the car models as sexy as they possibly could – replying to the cry of “the cars have no reflections or lighting effects” with real time world reflections and metallic paint that make the cars look like they’ve been lovingly polished for hours by a team of Mongolian midget slaves – oh yes, you will play this game just to tear around Leicester square in a gleaming red Ferrari F50 with a big grin on your face, it doesn’t stop there. PGR also features aesthetic only (but visually pleasing) car damage that adds an extra edge of realism. But that’s about as far as PGR goes. It’s not a serious racing game, you can’t tune your car at all – you can go so far as to change the paint job and choose between manual and auto transmission, but who cares? The Controls are a joy as well, apart from not being able to properly configure each button to your own personal need (and therefore not being able to comfortably use the handbrake if you opt to use the right analogue stick to accelerate and break) each car has its own handling and feel. Well, what PGR comes down to is Real life cities and streets, beautifully rendered cars, good music and a great game to play with mates and this makes PGR more than worthy to be the best racer on the XBOX, but if you’ve played MSR to death and you’re hoping for something more in PGR then you may be disappointed because, to me, this game is nothing more than MSR version 1.5 – a seemingly patched and bettered version than its DC prequel.
One thing confused me though… “Project Gotham” what’s that about?! I can only imagine a little foreign (probably Japanese) guy sitting around thinking “ah, Batman film had big buildings in city – let call game Gotham Racing.” The Mind Boggles!!!!