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Brevity
05-14-2003, 07:51 AM
Your Gotham nights are about to get sweeter.
By Raymond "[GSI] Psylancer" Padilla | 5/13/2003

gamespy

Developer: Bizarre Creations
Publisher: Microsoft
Release Date: April 2003
Genre: Sports




Ever since it developed Metropolis Street Racer (MSR) for Dreamcast, Bizarre Creations has been known for putting out beautiful racers based on it novel "kudos" system, which rewards style and high-risk maneuvers. Its Xbox debut, Project Gotham Racing (PGR) , wowed gamers with its gorgeous graphics and entertainingly exaggerated racing action. Its follow up, Project Gotham Racing 2, ups the graphics ante and improves the kudos system. Best of all the grand madness that is PGR will be playable on Xbox Live.

PGR2 will be twice as big as its predecessor, with twice as many cars and twice as many environments. In addition to the previously included Mini Cooper, which has grown exceedingly trendy (but at least it's not as stupid as a Hummer), you get to choose from choice wheels such as the BMW Z4, the Pontiac GTO, the Porsche Cayenne Turbo, and the ridiculously sexy Ferrari Enzo. You can rip up the pavement in the cities you visited in PGR or explore new locales, including Chicago, Barcelona, Florence, Edinburgh, and Moscow. Adding flavor to each of the cities is a revamped music system. Local DJs and songs are mixed into the various radio stations you can listen to. The soundtrack will feature at least 150 licensed songs.

The much-lauded kudos system has been enhanced, giving it the potential to be more entertaining than ever. Players can now earn kudos by following racing lines, drafting, not picking up damage, and riding on two wheels. Of course these new bonuses can be chained together with all the old tricks from the first game. These additions make the kudos system more robust and more accessible. It will be easier for new players to pull off high-scoring tricks, while veterans will use the new moves to reach higher scores.

Along with Top Spin, PGR2 is the Xbox Live title I'm looking forward to the most. The Xbox Live features this game will sport are most robust. Naturally, the typical multiplayer options are included to you can race with up to eight people online. You can also do slick things like challenge people's best times; in these races you'll see the ghost image of the person you challenge, enabling you to follow their line and tweak it to your style. In the same race you'll see two ghosts during the second lap: your target's ghost and your ghost from the first lap. Other Live features include real-time leader boards and a vast array of stat tracking (best times, highest kudos, who's best with what cars, etc.).


Visually, the biggest difference (thus far) is in the car models. These babies look sweet and feature a higher level of detail. The environments I saw looked great, but still suffer from the sterility found in PGR and MSR. As one gaming journalist put it, the environments in PGR2 look like they were struck by a neutron bomb. Hopefully the developers can make the environments as lively as they are beautiful.

Even without its Xbox Live functionality, PGR2 will be a sweet game. The graphics are improved (and should be improved even more) and the outstandingly fun kudos system is getting extended. When you throw in all the online capabilities, this will be a tough racer to beat. It will be fun, it will be beautiful, and you can rock it on the Internet.