Project Gotham Racing 3

"A fine cup of race car ramen"

In this specific district of Tokyo, you'll see now many buildings. Beautiful buildings lined with glass that sparkles in the sunlight, some of bricks that are routinely cleaned so to offer the most welcoming invitation possible. Look at the sky now, look at the great, vast blue that extends infinitely. The sun protrudes rays of brilliance, and you can meet them. Watch the beam cast across your windshield in the upper right, moving down, and now out as you move under a bridge. Worry not though, for the sun awaits your return; there it is, literally beaming, at the end of the tunnel. Allow your eyes to focus this array of light and drive through it like a plane through a cloud. Beautiful buildings again, lined up and divided only by the roads which you dart across.

Project Gotham Racing 3 certainly looks beautiful.

These finely woven strands of graphical intensity will happily provide a base for your noodles of offerings, as this is the strongest of PGR3's cups. Return now as the race is over to your ‘career' mode of sorts, and tackle another race. Maybe this time it'll be a race to dart through cones, or a one-on-one. But by now, you're very used to the routine. For however many racing diversions PGR3 offers (and there aren't that many), they come by quickly and then the new stops. No more new modes as you trek across the remaining portion of the game; a good 75% of it. Can you really go on for that long without being introduced to anything fancy and shiny?

Well, besides vehicles, of course; PGR3's array of mobiles will surely please the car-nut while offering sleek looks to the more casual who simply wants to hit the road. PGR3 offers an interesting sort of racing that's neither purely realistic nor purely arcade; it's a humble mish-mash likely to make the less informed feel like they're doing something special by controlling a car in an environment that's essentially handicapped. Physics, maneuvers, everything isn't spot-on for simulation. If it wants to race toe-to-toe with Forza Motorsport or Enthusia, PGR3 has a bit to go yet to capture that level of realism. However, it serves itself as a unique experience well enough because it also isn't Need For Speed or Ridge Racer. It's just kinda… itself. Like the newbie that's struggling to grasp the realism of its bigger brothers.

It doesn't come off as anything short of enjoyable, though; the lack of refinement in realism means it's easy to grasp and run with, but all the same difficult to tune exactly right. Within several races anyone with a controller in hand will be able to keep up with the opposition, given they're playing on an easier difficulty. It's a very friendly racer for the Gran Turismo crowd, really, though it offers far less customization options than GT it plays very similarly in that it appears to be shooting for the sim feel, but it doesn't hit the mark.

So it's nice to have this appealing straggler to handle, but the game is just as lacking in environments as it is in gameplay modes. There's a small set of grander areas to drive around in, each offering different routes and tracks within the entire scope, but the grander areas don't come in plentiful supply. It suffers in the same way that Ridge Racer 6 does; letting out (nearly) all the cats from the bag right at the get-go means an intense first couple races, but then a sudden hit of cold repetition when you're racing through a track you know you've been down in some portion before. The mish-mash of routes within the areas can only be interconnected so many times, too; you'll soon find yourself racing part of race A fused with part of race B, both of which you've already raced through and hence are already very familiar with. That's when the new stops, and that's when the excitement dies down.

PGR3 doesn't offer a particularly lengthy single-player campaign, certainly not as lengthy or robust as such racers as Gran Turismo 4 or Forza Motorsport. It does offer extended replay through its online offering though, giving you the chance to race head-to-head with other gear-heads in a competition of handling and speed. It manages to shoehorn you into the crowd of gamers that are about at your skill level, or are at least within the realm of it. It offers a ranking system that helps to manage who you go up against as well, the ranking fluctuating between victories and losses. The majority of the online appeal comes from the Xbox Live network itself, which is indicative of an enjoyable, but mediocre online offering at base.

Not that you should ignore the game due to its faults. It's an entertaining trek over the pavement of miles, and as a racer it excels over most of the other 360 competition because though it suffers in similar ways to its closest competitors, it manages to detract from the faults by handing you many trinkets to earn (trophies, awards) and… yes, offering stellar graphics that are possibly the most fluid and realistic of any racing game to date. If you're on the lookout for a racer on the 360, it'd be foolish to overlook this budding champion.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/02/07