Project Gotham Racing 2 on the Xbox is the sequel to Project Gotham Racing, the 2001 street racing game that launched alongside Microsoft's black box. Actually, the first PGR was more or less and improved version of Metropolis Street Racer, a Dreamcast racing game developed by the same team behind the PGR games. With the first Project Gotham game, Bizzare improved on MSR in every possible way, from the graphics, to the audio and to the controls. Amazingly, I played PGR even more than Halo back in the days of the Xbox launch (although that does nothing to diminish Bungie's masterpiece). Now, we get the sequel and there are many new features.
Usually when I review a movie or game, I describe the plot right about now. However, PGR 2 is racing game, and racing games usually don't have one. Such is the case here, so for once, I won't have to bore you explaining the story; I can get right to the game.
The biggest change in PGR 2 is sadly the one I wasn't able to try; the online support. Based on what I've read about it, it seems really cool. You can play the game by yourself or with 4 people offline, but even when you're by your lonesome, you can go online. Not only can you find people to play with online (you can play with up to 16 players online, I think), but you can also play the one player game with a neat addition. You see, when you complete races and various challenges while logged on, your results are uploaded onto the PGR 2 scoreboard. This means that all your record times and kudos scores are recorded and put into the game's database. This data will be visible to all online players, and they can try and beat the best score or time. It's kind of like the sense of competition you'd find in the arcade, with friends trying to get the highest score in a game like Pac-Man or Galaga. The records are constantly changing, so you may find that someone may have just beaten your best.
Admittingly, the score uploading isn't really new, at least to hardcore gamers; some Dreamcast games had this function. However, in those cases, your scores weren't automatically uploaded to the database, nor were you connected to the Internet when you were achieving your great results. You had to get the score offline, save your results to your VMU, log onto the internet in-game, search through the in-game website for the uploading section, and follow the instructions to upload your score from your VMU to the server. In PGR 2, it does this automatically. Also, in the Dreamcast days, it was extremely hard to tell if some of the uploaded rankings were achieved through cheating. Now, I think that you can only upload scores online and if my prior assumption is wrong, I know for a fact that there's a much stronger web administration that observes the times and scores uploaded, always searching for those achieved by fraudulent measures. Also, when you set a record online, a ghost car of your performance is uploaded and can be viewed by players to see just how they were able to do it. In addition, players can actually try racing against the ghosts to try and defeat them. Pretty neat stuff.
However, because I can't get broadband Internet access in my area, I couldn't experience any of this online goodness. Now that I think about it, the online function is such a big part of PGR 2 that I really don't think I should be reviewing this game having not experienced it for myself. Oh, well, there's nothing I can do about it… at least not yet.
The first game had excellent graphics, and this one is no exception. The modeling of the many licensed cars is very impressive; they all look like the real thing. I really liked that you could browse a virtual showroom and look at all the cars you could buy with the kudos points you earn in the game (or you can buy extra cars online). There are various rooms that hold cars by their brand name (like Ford or Toyota/Lexus), and even if you can afford these cars, you can take them out for a test drive on the racing track in the back of the showroom. Just like the first game, PGR 2 has many real life tracks set in cities like Florence, Washington D.C., and Moscow, and of the cities I've been to, the game's versions have an excellent attention to detail; they look almost exactly like their real-world counterparts. In fact, I was talking to my brother who was in London's St. James Park (it was featured in the first PGR game) and he told me that the game captured it perfectly. One little issue I had with the graphics was that the frame-rate seemed a little slower than the first game's. It's still acceptable at 30 or so frames per second, but it was never able to achieve a silky smooth 60, a frame-rate that the first game flirted with every so often. Because of this, the sensation of speed in PGR 2 seems a little slower than the first game.
In the audio department, this game builds and the same stuff that they put into the first PGR. Bizarre has complied a nice collection of about 100 distinct music tracks by licensed bands and they've recruited real life DJs from various radio stations from around the world to do some voice commentary in between the music (that is, when you turn that function on). The biggest audio innovation that the first game introduced into the console world is the Xbox's custom soundtrack function, and they built onto that, as well. You have a multitude of different options on how to play the music you have saved on the hard drive. You can register up to 100 tracks onto the in-game CD player (in the cars you drive, of course), you can switch between the various soundtracks you have and scroll through the music that way (you now have a way to change your music during a race, unlike the first game), and you have many more helpful options for the music. The car sounds are very authentic and the sounds of the vehicle interacting with the environment (i.e. hitting guardrails, other cars, cones, or the road itself from catching air) sound really nice.
Now onto the gameplay, which is the most important part of any video game. You have a good selection of modes to choose from, including the usual time trials and arcade races, but you also have the championship mode where you compete in a variety of different challenges like street racing, cone challenges, overtake races (try to pass as many cars as you can) and races where you need to meet or beat a certain target time. By completing these tests, you open up access to new cars, new tracks, harder challenges to complete, and you also earn kudos points that you can use to buy cars.
It's all about those Kudos points in these games. As you race with style and perform cool tricks like drifting, going up on two wheels, or passing opponent cars, you earn these points that you can use to buy cars. The change in PGR 2 is that you now have new methods of earning Kudos points, including tailgating cars, winning races without hitting objects, and taking a perfect line in a turn. This game gives better rewards for those purely concerned with speed and winning races than the last game did (it favored style over racing skills; now there's a better balance).
As far as the actual controls are concerned, they're functional, but they seem a little more rigid than the first game. The steering doesn't feel quite as responsive as they did back in 2001 and I felt that during drifts, I had less control over my car than before. The controls in the first game had a bit of a learning curve, but I got used to them; I couldn't really get used to it in the sequel. Overall, the controls still work all right, but the drop in intuitiveness between the two PGR games was sadly noticeable in number 2.
Because of the controls, I wasn't able to get into Project Gotham Racing 2 as much as its predecessor. Perhaps my attitude would be a little different had I played this game online, but I'm not sure. When (or if) I get broadband, I might revisit this game, but for now, PGR2 gets an 8 out of 10.
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