Project Gotham Racing 3
November 29,2005 - Back in 2001, UK based Bizarre Creations helped to launch Microsoft’s big bulky box with a great racing game called Project Gotham Racing. The game walked the line between arcade and simulation racing very well. For the launch of the Xbox 360, Bizarre has put a lot of time and energy into creating Project Gotham Racing 3, the third, and definitely the best incarnation of the franchise.

The first two PGR games were all about driving with style as well as skill. You’d earn “Kudos” for performing stylish driving feats, like Power Sliding around a corner, Slipping into an opposing racer’s draft, or getting your car up on two wheels. That part of the game hasn’t changed. Unlike the first two PGR games though, you won’t have to work as hard to get at all of the high end cars. The car list has been trimmed down significantly since PGR2, with only around 80 cars. The cars that are available end up being a who’s who of automotive excellence. Ferrari, Mercedes, Lamborghini, Jaguar, TVR, virtually all of the most well known auto manufacturers have cars in PGR3.

Project Gotham Racing 3 is split up into two main modes; Career and PlayTime. PlayTime is essentially an Arcade mode. You can quickly jump into a race, either Single Player, Split Screen, over System Link or Xbox Live. It’s a good way to practice and get familiar with the cars and tracks you’ll be racing on. Also available through the PlayTime menu is a route creator. This a very basic track editor which will let you pick a city and create your own route through it. It’s a cool addition, but the tracks the it creates aren’t cordoned off like the main tracks are. Instead there will be floating arrows on the side of the road, indicating the direction you need to go. These arrows have the same stopping power as a wall. Still, for people that want to plot their own way through the game’s cities, this is a nice touch.

The Career mode of the game is divided up into two main parts Solo and Online. The Career mode will still have you trying to earn Kudos in order to progress up the ranks. You’ll do this by competing in a series of Championships each with their own particular theme. Completing races will earn you both Kudos and Credits, which you can use to buy more cars. The amount of credits you’ll earn depends on the race event, but PGR3 is very generous in terms of awarding you with money. The game will award credits after each successful race, and then it’ll add on a nice bonus amount after winning a trophy. This makes sure that you’ll be able to quickly afford the cars that you want to own. You’ll be able to use any car in any event. PGR3 doesn’t have any events that are class or car specific, like its predecessors did. Instead the game will just adjust the race goals and AI cars around the car you’ve chosen.

Many of the modes from the previous two PGR games have returned in PGR3, like Street Races, Overtake, Cone Challenge, and Speed Challenge. There are also a few new types added to the Career mode. The most notable, and most fun is the Time Vs Kudos mode. Here you’ll start with a set amount of time on the clock which will count down. The amount of time you are given is not enough to complete the race. You will need to drive stylishly to earn Kudos which will stop the clock for a brief period of time. The more Kudos you earn, the more time you’ll save.

It won’t take very long to complete the Solo Career mode. Most people should be able to get through it in roughly six to seven hours. Thankfully, PGR3 offers an Online Career mode as well. Here you’ll be vying for both Kudos and Credits, much like in the Solo Career. Unlike the single player though, you’ll be racing against real live people and not AI controlled bots. Online Careers don’t really have an ending either. You can simply keep on racing, earning Kudos and Credits to improve your ranking. The fact that you’ll be racing against other human players makes every race an entirely different affair and gives PGR3 a lot of lasting value. The game does its best to group you up with players that not only have a good network connection, but are of a similar skill level as you. For the most part it does a good job of this, though sometimes you’ll get the occasional bad apple.

The online mode has three main race types: Street Race, Eliminator, and Capture the Track. Street Race and Eliminator play the same way online as they do offline. The Capture the Track mode is interesting. It’s a Team based mode where two teams fight for control of the track. The team that posts the fastest time in any given sector of the track will take that sector as their own. The team with the most sectors owned at the end of the race, wins. This is a mode that seems to favour speed over style, so it may not be for everyone.

PGR3 is an interesting game in that it tries very hard to walk the line between realism and fun. For the most part it does a good job of it. Each car feels distinct and powerful in its own way. At the same time, the game’s physics lean more towards the arcade side of things. Things that are difficult to do in real life, like controlling a slide are made accessible in PGR3. The game focuses more on the joy of driving fast as opposed to trying to present itself as the most authentic simulator in the world. This is most notable in the game’s handling of collisions and damage. The only real penalty to hitting a wall or another opponent is lost speed. Though the game does have visible car damage, it’s purely superficial and doesn’t affect the car in any way. You can play bumper cars with the AI if you want to, it’ll only cost you a little bit of speed. The AI controlled cars will definitely do the same to you.

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