Project Gotham Racing 3

"Good game, period."

I've always been a fan of the Project Gotham series and own part one and two.
For me drifting through turns was always awesome, I remember playing the old Ridge Racer games where you could easily race through an S turn with over 200 mph. And now with Project Gotham that part of my dream of the perfect race game was achieved. To me Project Gotham 3 is the first real race game for the Xbox 360. One of the new cool features that I like in Project Gotham Racing 3 is that when you fill up your garage you automatically unlock the next larger garage. This gives you a little bit the feeling that you're playing a story mode, at least to me. And besides that, it's always fun to unlock stuff other than just cars and tracks.

This brings me to the next new feature, badges, badges can be compared to the online achievements. You can earn badges by completing a combo, winning a cup or having more than a million dollars worth of cars in your garage, these are the easy badges, there are also badges like beating the game on the hardest level, which is ‘'hardcore'', or making an unending combo from start to finish. A lot of these hard badges will probably be too hard for you, like they were to me. Which automatically is a downside of PGR 3, the ultimate badges are just too hard. It's ok to make things harder as you progress in the game, but some things just overdo it... This is also a downside for the online achievements, because some of the badges I mentioned above are online achievements.

Graphics are good, but they were already good with PGR 2 on the original Xbox in my eyes so you won't hear me complain soon about the graphics of a race game nowadays. All the options are, like before, very easy to understand. Everything pretty much explains itself so it's very user friendly. What does annoy me is that in some courses, when you look at the small track on the left of your screen, the road appears to be straight, but then out of nothing comes a small turn. Because of your speed you easily ram into the wall and see the opposition take the lead. But now that I think about it, it may be because of the way my view is when I drive. My view is from the front of the car.

Sound has improved a lot, not so much the engine and/or crash noises, but the playlist that PGR 3 offers. I hear a lot of bands that I like and some of the best classic symphonies ever made. Comparing this to PGR 2, PGR 3 has taken a huge jump forward. The option tunes haven't really changed for the better, not that it was necessary, and the engine noises are still good and realistic.

Gameplay is good, very good. When racing and getting out of a turn you pull out with full gas. It's very realistic the way you feel the car slipping away and so you have correct it to stay on the road. And for making the combos the handbrake is of enormous value, when you're on a long straight road and you still want to continue your combo, using your handbrake is the only option you have. Be careful though when using the handbrake because you'll lose control with a lot of care if you go too fast.

And now let's look at the online options. I bought this game about 3 weeks ago so I think I got in just a little too late. A lot of times when I search for a game it takes about 5 minutes before I can actually start. Xbox Live has a complete career mode as well, of course the online career is a lot harder because now you'll be playing against people, and not the computer. In the online career you can unlock achievements too, online and offline badges. If you don't have access to Xbox Live, well, it's tough luck then, because you won't be able to complete the game without it. In total there are 950 Gamerscore achievements to win, but this is extremely hard.

Even though Project Gotham Racing 3 is a very hard game at times, it's still a great racing game and in my eyes by far the best racer for Xbox 360. But if you're still in doubt whether or not to buy this game, just rent it and see for yourself. See ya.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/15/06