Pros: Great graphics even now, wonderful ambient sounds, excellent multiplayer experience, excellent in car view
Cons: You'd better put on your own soundtrack, single player experience boring, dream cars purchased quickly
The bottom line: A decent racing title with wonderful graphics and an excellent online experience. The single player experience could have used more work, and the soundtrack is a major disappointment.
Gameplay: 6
Graphics: 9
Sound: 5
Controls: 10
Longevity: 6

Overall: 72% (3 stars/Average)

Project Gotham Racing

A third for Bizarre Creation, this popular racing game has seen quite a bit of change since it's introduction on the original XBox. The first is that the number of cars has increased from a poultry 29 to 80 (all with top speeds that must exceed 175 m.p.h). The second is that the graphical detail has increased significantly with the amount of horsepower that the XBox360 has to offer. The last is the addition of one more city to the mix, up from 4 in the first series.

The reception for the series has been a popular one, ranking in sales only 2nd to Halo on the original XBox. Bizarre Creations has set out to try to revolutionize the way we see racing games with the inclusion of an in car racing view, with working speed dials and detailed rear view mirrors. The realism presented was an innovation hoped by Bizarre to be one that no other racing game will be forced to not live without. So far, the racing community may just be asking for it in the forthcoming blockbuster Forza Motorsports 2...

Gameplay

This arcade-type racer has, as mentioned above, 80 cars that you can go for, 71 of which are already unlocked. The other 9 have to be unlocked by way of winning races in offline mode. You can also download 28 additional cars from XBox Live Marketplace, some for free and some for a nominal cost.

The game modes available to you ranging from career mode to online Multiplayer racing modes (including tournament play). You also have the option of watching other player's races through a mode known as Gotham TV, which is an innovative little feature showing ticker tape about top players and record breaking information.

Within the career mode, you are given virtual money to start to purchase your first vehicle of choice. With the purchase of your 1st vehicle (usually a GTR or something similar), you are able to race with it and keep up with nearly all the other vehicles on most any course after practice. A main limiting factor to this mode is that you are not allowed to customize or upgrade any of your vehicles that you do purchase in career mode, or any vehicles won or unlocked. After you win any race, you are awarded cash to allow you to purchase your next sought car.

As in most other racing games, you have the ability to try to beat your time in time trial mode. This time is recorded and carried over to XBox Live Leaderboards (if you have the XBox Live Gold Membership) for others to try and beat.

Online modes primarily revolve around up to 8 people (a little low for next gen systems) coming together and racing for supremacy. You can also play online career mode ranked or unranked, depending on which suits your fancy, with leaderboards tracking results no matter which you choose.

During races, over a suite of circuits over 5 cities, you are normally racing to 1st place and trying to set the best time. Another system that has been held over from prior PGR series games is the kudos system, where you are awarded points for performing slides around turns, lifting all 4 wheels off the ground while flying over a hill, or generally doing what you normally would do while trying to perform a beautifully timed race. While nice in theory, it is just a scoring system that essentially lets you know what you already know what you are doing right.

What brings down the gameplay down to average mediocrity in PGR3 is the inability for the player to modify their vehicles. Unlike other racing games that allow you to do so, being able to modify your vehicle brings a personal flare to your vehicle that players like. Also, there are those gear heads amongst us that like modify the gear ratios, add certain parts, or try to reduce the weight of the vehicle to try to gain the best performance out of a car. This game prevents you from doing that from any vehicle, thus leaving you with the same 80 cars that you perhaps have purchased and leaving you with a drab feeling that you purchased something a little less than you wished.

Graphics

The graphics are, without a doubt, nearly photo realistic. The amount of detail that the developers have put into each car (40,000 polygons to everyone of them) really brings out the intrinsic uniqueness and painstaking attention that went into the cars. The inside car views were matched to the 80 vehicles down to the last polygon. This meant that if you were to look inside the vehicle that was in the game, you would be unable to tell the difference between real life and the view (esp. if you went into photography mode).

During racings, the cars show every reflection of every building, every cloud overhead, and every light that was meant to be reflected in a realistic manner. Since there is no damage applied to your cars (more on that later), it nearly makes you forget about the race to appreciate all the graphical advancement that has been made since Outrun. I applaud the developers attention to detail, as it really showed.

The courses also had just as much attention to detail, as you race by the casinos of Las Vegas (esp. at night) or the streets of New York. Many players have taken to ignoring races and taking in-game pictures of their dream car near a famous landmark to send to their friends (nearly fooled some, too). The developers took satellite data and made sure that the landmarks were matched as perfectly as possible to the locations that you would be racing by. The reflections of sunlight, your cars and those of your opponent, etc., were perfectly matched.

The one major caveat to this near graphical perfection is that the game runs at 30 frames per second. Now most will say that the human eye cannot perceive much difference above 24 frames per second, but there is a distinct difference in smoothness of motion. In fact, the difference for players between 30 frames per second and 60 frames per second is distinct and many racers usually opt for the latter rather than the former.

As a launch title, this game greatly demonstrated and continues to demonstrate the power the system is capable of.

Sounds

As the developers spent so much time with graphics, they must have completely forgot about the sound. The soundtrack is what I would call a wonderful example in music. In fact, I would call it an example in trying to find your CD and ripping it onto your hard drive to try to find something else to listen to (yes, it is that bad). I will leave the soundtrack at that.

The ambient sounds slightly make up for the major shortcoming in sound, as the cars themselves sound pretty good. Having personally not driven these super sports car, and most likely never will, I would say they did a pretty good job making it sound like I am in one when I am in the inside view, and outside one when I am not. The bass response is great when I am at the starting line, and the tweeter response is great when the RPM's get high.

The soundtrack, though, what in God's name were they thinking?!

Controls

Every hundredth of a second counts in these racing games, and any perception of a delay in response will cost you the race. There is no such perception, and in fact the response is smooth and the controls are where they should be. I have no complaints in this area.

Longevity

The issues the were aforementioned in gameplay (inability to configure and customize car settings) really drag down the longevity of single player, and perhaps multiplayer. Though you can take pictures all day of your vehicle, if you like, that is not the main reason why we purchased a game. Graphics are only but a small part, gameplay is a far bigger reason why players come to play, and longevity is what helps keep players in the game.

The online modes, such as Gotham TV, are fun to watch and fun to play but only for short periods of time. It is not one to hold your attention for long if you are one that happens to think "well if I happen to tune my car this way..." Also, with only 7 other players racing against you, races feel kind of empty.

Conclusions

Project Gotham Racing 3's price thankfully has come down to $29.99 (and if found used, even cheaper than that). So I can safely recommend this game at that price as a nice entry level racing game for those who have not experienced the racing genre. I can even recommend this game for those who happen to be looking for a racing game, but are a little short on cash, as this is a nice title that offers up those dream cars that need not be tuned and can be quickly brought into the race. This title should hold one's attention long enough before the next major racing title comes out (if it has not come out already).