Project Gotham Racing 2

"The slickest racin title, just got slicker! Kudos!"

Not very often am I impressed nowadays… And I wasn't totally impressed at first with PGR2 (due to the horrible, short, and uninspiring introduction video which SHOULD have being improved upon to do this game justice). However, after playing through this game for about 12 hours, I think I am quite impressed. This is the sequel to the launch title Project Gotham Racing (which was a sequel to a racing game on Dreamcast which was not that well known)..

The simple concept behind Project Gotham Racing (and PGR2) is that instead of racing to just come ahead of everyone else, why not try coming ahead by doing cool stunts with your car? This is sort of like the Tony Hawk of driving games. In PGR2, the scoring system is based on ''Kudos'' points. Kudos are points awarded to you as you drive around stylishly or complete challenges.

Kudos are earned whilst driving/racing in the Kudos World Series (a fancy title for the main single player experience). In this mode you begin to see the differences between PGR and PGR2. The first thing you'll notice is there are now car classes, such as ''Sports Convertible'', ''Sports Utility'', ''Pacific Muscle'', ''Roadster'', ''American Muscle'' and ''Ultimate''.. There are many more, but these are just a few. You start off being able only to play the challenges for the first category of ''Compact Sports'', and the challenges are very easy. Challenges come in the forms of street races (self explanatory), cone challenges (where you have to gain as many Kudos as possible in a track), overtake (where you have to overtake the cars), speed cameras, and a few more. Once you've selected a challenge, you get to pick the difficulty. The difficulty varies but its a lot easier than the original PGR as you can now nominate from one of 5 difficulty levels before the challenge, and it is quite easy to pass the easier levels. The harder ones will require you to have a better car to pass (as in a faster car will help)... With each challenge, you have to pick a car from the class. Initially you can only pick between 2 cars from each class (and you cannot mix classes) but as you progress in the game with kudos, you raise your kudos rank..

To begin with, Kudos are earned by doing tricks such as 360's, driving on two wheels, drifting, gaining air and sliding. Then you can also gain them by overtaking, following the best (race) line, doing clean sections, driving between cone markers and using combos. Similarly to Tony Hawk you can string together loads of Kudos-earning things to make a combo (with multipliers) effectively making it possible to do a combo around the whole track during a race or challenge; but bear in mind if you hit the walls you lose the Kudos. Kudos however can be stored in the ''Kudos Bank'' which happens automatically after a couple of seconds of not gaining Kudos. The reason for this is, you have a couple of seconds to add to your combo; but then if you hit something you lose it; effectively making this a risky situation.

Anyway, when you complete challenges, you gain medals and bonus kudos (depending on your difficulty level you selected). This is where the game begins to differ further from the original PGR. With kudos, you reach certain targets and therefore increase your Kudos Rank. With each rank increase you get Kudos tokens which are used to purchase cars. Cars range in cost upto about 22 tokens for the best cars. Now, you can buy cars anytime from any class (through the Showroom feature) and they can be used in multiplayer and time attack-style modes; but bear in mind they cannot be used in challenges outside of their own class (ie. buying the Enzo Ferrari does not mean you can use it to race against the SUVs). Having a better car, will usually help you in your challenges. I want to quickly mention one of the new challenges in PGR2. The speed camera. You have to get your car up to a certain speed as you pass the speed camera. Interesting concept isn't it? Also note that this is an example of where faster cars = faster speed = easier to pass harder difficulty in challenge.

To help you pick which car to buy (bear in mind there are no refunds or exchanges in this game), you get to see a comparison with 4 aspects; acceleration, top speed, powerslide ability and handling. This isn't the best way to compare cars especially when there's no return (unlike GT3's feature of resetting the console); but there is something unique in this game. A virtual car showroom. Yes, you can walk around your virtual showroom and test drive nearly any car in the game; there are a few to be unlocked. But you can do this for free, on a special test track which means when you first buy the game you can test out the Enzo Ferrari. When test driving you can also gain damage (imagine doing that to a real test-drive!). Car damage is amazingly cool and you can see your numberplate fly off when you hit a wall. Bear in mind the damage is only visual. There is also a Garage feature which lets you view the cars you've already bought, as well as see a covered up version of cars you haven't bought. Ironically your numberplate appears on all of them.

Anyway, the racing style is very similar to PGR1 so if you really are interested, look up some PGR reviews. Now I'm going to focus on the bigger thing, the tracks. The tracks in this game rock. My favourite is the Sydney track (me being a Sydneysider of course). Its incredibly real, most of it is extremely like the real thing. There are a few bits which are 'uncertain'; ie. Yes you see buildings like that in that section of Sydney, but no they are not next to that section in real life. BUT there are some really good sections; and I even found the place where I went for work experience. The building which houses Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu was there, and the buildings around it with umbrellas, the ATMs and the bank across the road, and the National Australia Bank on the corner. All were featured and pretty much perfectly like the real thing. Oh and the neighbouring pub too. The attention to detail is INCREDIBLE, even more so when you have been to the place in real life! I cannot really say much about the other places as I cannot really recall what they looked like in real life, but the other places such as Moscow, Edinburgh and Hong Kong seem pretty realistic.

Now, the last thing I'd like to mention is the Radio. Whilst the music included is good, the radio feature is amazing. When driving you can press the right thumbstick to open the radio (whilst driving) and pushing up/down alters the volume and left/right changes track. And it shows that just like in real life, its pretty hard to drive fast and tune the radio at the same time! The options let you pick what music (soundtrack from Xbox hard drive, or included PGR2 music) is played under the Radio and CD options. In CD option it just plays it normally and you can switch tracks whilst driving; in Radio mode however the music is played like on a radio and you have little control over it. The amazing part is they have used real life local radio stations in the game to add the slogans, the catch phrases and some realistic lines like ''We get a lot of calls for this track.'' .. In Sydney they had Triple M, Nova 969 and 2Day FM 104.1. They had the authentic lines from those real stations mixed into the music I was playing. I found this to be the maddest thing I have ever heard of in a game.

Well I've missed a lot of things out from this review, this game is ''that big''. Its quite easily the best racer to date on Xbox, and I find it better than GT3 because of its new style of driving AND its realistic racing tracks. For those torn between buying PGR2 and Need for Speed Underground, I'd pick PGR2 easily. Also I haven't mentioned Xbox Live! in this review as I do not have access to it; however a 2 month subscription is included free in the DVD case (in Australia). From what I see in the booklet and read online, Xbox Live! integration with PGR2 is very good.

I have one gripe over this game though. The CD mode stops music the moment you finish a track, and the next race starts with a new track. If your like me, you'll get annoyed as I hate listening to half a song... And since a lot of the challenges in PGR2 are extremely short (less than a minute) you miss out on songs very often. Its a small gripe to pay for a game which offers realistic cars, car damage, great graphics and music, slick replays and great gameplay.

Last but not least, the cars. Here are some of my favorites which made it to the game;
BMW X5 4.6is, BMW M3, Mazda RX-8, Jaguar XKR, Porsche Cayenne Turbo, Aston Martin Vanquish, Subaru Impreza WRX Sti, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 7, Enzo Ferrari and Porsche 911 GT2. For more info on car list head on over to IGN.

If your still unsure about this game, go rent it. If you have a craving for a fast and fun game, buy it now! Its by far the best racing game on any console.. at least until GT4 comes out.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/24/03