Project Gotham Racing 4

October 9,2007 - The track conditions are horrendous tonight. It's a thunderstorm out there. You're flying down the straight, trying to catch up with the race leader when you see a bolt of lightning strike the track ahead of you. The light illuminates the huge puddle of water that's right where you would have started braking for the next corner. Do you hit the brakes hard and hope you slow down enough? Maybe you ease off the throttle and turn in? Or maybe you just flick it in and hit the e-brake and hope for the best? You'll need to make choices like that a lot while playing Project Gotham Racing 4, where you're not only racing against opponents, but the elements too.

PGR4 is the second Gotham game to be released on the Xbox 360. The last PGR game was a launch title, and it did a good job of showing what the 360 was capable of. Two years later Bizarre Creations have had time to get very familiar with the Xbox 360 platform, and the result is a more polished and better game.

The game offers plenty of game modes for both single and multiplayer. The main single player mode is the Gotham Career mode, which has been completely overhauled. Your goal is to become the number one ranked driver in the world. You'll do this by competing in various events scheduled on a calendar. As your rank increases you'll gain the ability to enter higher class events which are worth more tour points. When you complete a racing season, your overall standing at the end of the season is compared to what it was when the season started, then it's time to begin a new season and try to bring that rank up even further. Going through a second or third calendar year will mean you'll get to compete in different events that were inaccessible at the start of the previous season.

PGR4 also has a nicely developed arcade mode. It's divided up into chapters and it's effectively set up in much the same way as the original PGR had its career mode set up. There are several races per chapter which you can choose to tackle in a variety of difficulties. There is also the ability to play a race with custom settings, purchase cars and other items in the PGR Shop, or check out race replays and photos with the new PGR On Demand feature. There is an extensive online mode which has Party support, so you and your friends can race and stay together across multiple events. Online has always been one of PGR's stronger points and expansion for PGR4 should give it great lasting power.

All of these modes are meaningless if the game doesn't play well. PGR4 delivers a solid and exhilarating racing experience. This is in no small part due to the addition of motorcycles to the mix. Cars and Bikes race in the same events, which changes the whole dynamic of the race. For the most part everything works well, although when you're on a bike and racing against cars, the AI will occasionally completely disregard where you are and just knock you off your bike. It can get frustrating at times, but with a little bit of practice it's possible to take advantage of the motorcycles' faster off the line speed to take and keep the lead. When it comes to car vs. car, the AI is a little bit better about not deliberately plowing into you, but it does still happen occasionally.

PGR's control scheme has remained mostly unchanged. It's always worked well, so why mess with it? What has changed slightly is the Kudos system. Previously any bump or scrape of the wall would nullify your current Kudos string. This time around the game is a bit more forgiving. You can nudge a wall on the way out of a corner and still retain the Kudos you were building. If you hit the wall with a good bit of speed though, you will then lose your Kudos. This makes the game feel much less frustrating. Hats off to Bizarre for making that small, yet very meaningful change. Another change that isn't just dressing is the addition or weather effects. You'll race in conditions ranging from sunny blue skies to snowstorms. Rain and snow make the track slick, which effects how your car handles. You'll come across pockets of standing water or snow that will cause your car to hydroplane if you don't know how to deal with them.

With two more years of time to get to know the Xbox 360, you might expect PGR4 to look and sound better than PGR3 did. You wouldn't be wrong either as PGR4 looks considerably better than its predecessor did. The urban environments look exquisite, with some nice little touches thrown in, like the Casino Royale in one of the Las Vegas tracks. The game showcases some truly stunning weather effects. Rain and snow will accumulate on the track as well as on your car. You'll see the water droplets hitting the windshield and being wiped off if you're driving from the in-car view. The cars themselves look much better than they did in PGR3. Some of that has to do with the way they're lit, which gives them a more lifelike, less cartoony look.

Considerable time went into the audio as well. Every car and motorcycle has a distinctive engine note that sounds different depending on what camera you're using. The in-car view has a somewhat muted tone to it that does a good job of simulating what driving with the windows up sounds like. It's also fair to mention that the sound of the engine and the sound of the exhaust are two different things. Some games still don't make that distinction so when it is present it’s well appreciated. PGR4 features a nicely varied soundtrack to race to. There's a good selection of genres from Rock to Classical. The only downside is that even though there are so many different songs, you tend to hear the same ones repeating often. Still, you can race to Ride of the Valkyries, and that's just cool.

Project Gotham Racing 4 is truly a great  racer. With solid gameplay both online and offline, PGR4 is sure to keep fans of racing games busy for months.

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