While I never managed to play Project Gotham Racing on the original Xbox, Project Gotham Racing 2 quickly became once of my favorite racing games on the system with its stylish racing and great online integration. Project Gotham Racing 3 continues the series' excellence, and is the definition of next-gen racing for the Xbox 360. PGR3 manages to improve upon the formula provided by its predecessors while coming packaged with some of the most amazing graphics ever seen in video gaming. There have been several racing games brought to the Xbox 360 since launch, but with its style and polish, Project Gotham Racing 3 is set to be the premier racing title for the Xbox 360.

In terms of change, there isn't a whole lot that separates PGR3 from the previous titles in the series. Fans from the first two games already know the premise. While the Playstation's flagship racing series Gran Turismo is known for having a simulated approach to racing, Microsoft's flagship racing game takes on a more arcade-like feel with the Kudos system. While the basic idea of the series is still street racing in sleek supercars, PGR3 encourages the racer to perform flashy drifts, slides and jumps to earn points, connecting stunts together to multiply the score further. While earning Kudos isn't required per se, it can be hard to progress further into the game without taking some risks on the track.

Speaking of tracks, there are several different game modes available in the game, taking place over five different cities. That's right, there are only five cities to be had in PGR3, which is, admittedly, a scarce number. However, each track is split into several sections, so while you will be racing the same city multiple times, you'll be doing so in different sections, which makes up for the small amount of cities available. At the same time, the cities and tracks included in the game are all based off of real life locales, including parts of New York, London, Tokyo, Las Vegas, and the famous Nürburgring track in Germany, and the detail of these areas is a wonderful graphical achievement. The virtual cities are modeled right down from their real-life counterparts, crowds and all. Everything just looks flat-out spectacular, almost as if you were in that Enzo Ferrari speeding down the streets of New York.

As far as the different modes go, there is a good variety in the different race challenges in the single player. Most of these are your standard fare, including street races, timed laps and one-on-one races. A few modes cater to the Kudos system in the game, some having you passing through cones while another has you gaining so many Kudos before time runs out or by the time you finish a lap. There are five different difficulty levels in each challenge, each of which awards your standard Olympic medal for the challenge. The different levels of difficulty make PGR3 very accessible to a wide audience, with steel and bronze being very easy for newcomers to the series while silver and gold pose a challenge to even veterans of the series (while getting all platinum requires patience and the blood of a sacrificial goat). PGR3 can be as challenging as you want it to be, but the single player, while being pretty meaty, is not where the game shines best.

PGR3 is at its best over Xbox Live. The entire game has integrated Live play, from directly racing against other opponents to universal timed scoreboards for every individual challenge in single player. There is also the option to race against ghosts of the best lap times throughout the world on different tracks, and a new feature called Gotham TV, which allows you to watch friends or the best players online race against each other. Most of the Live features are adopted straight from PGR2, so while much of it is upgraded from that game, the features are still very similar. Still, the integration of Xbox Live is clearly one of the best things about PGR3, and is easily makes it one of the best Live enabled games on the Xbox 360.

I already mentioned how great the game looks further up the page, but it deserves another mention. PGR3 is one beautiful game, with slick, shiny cars, near realistic racing locales, and blur effects to really give the game a sense of speed. One of the more impressive effects is the interior car camera, which shows off just about every detail of the inside of a car you could imagine. Like the cities in the game, the developers have taken the interior of every car in the game and recreated them with near perfection. To add to that, the engine and shifting sounds are directly from the real world, making PGR3 sounds as good and it looks and plays.

As far as racers go, you can't do a whole lot better than PGR3 on the Xbox 360. The game blends the realistic speed of the Gran Turismo series with the style of an arcade racer, all while looking great to boot. Besides that, it's probably one of the best games you can own for Xbox Live. A challenging and stylish experience, Project Gotham Racing 3 was great as an Xbox 360 launch title, and it's still ranks as one of the best games on the console.

Jun 28, 2006 | 0 comments
Chris Massey