Project Gotham Racing 4 Review

The Project Gotham Racing series is a really good series. I've never been really into racing games, other than the San Francisco Rush games. Best. Racing games. Ever. I remember playing that game in a tournament with Andrew when we were young.

The series first started out on the xbox and has been there ever since. The first one was pretty good, it introduced the Kudos points systems. The second one got even better. The third one took a while to come out but was hyped up beyond belief and it was a launch title for the xbox 360. I got it on launch day and was really impressed. The graphics were beautiful and the new weather system was sweet. It really looked like rain was falling.

Now we come to the fourth title in the series. With Project Gotham Racing 4, they introduced motorcycles into this previous car only racing game. I bought it as soon as it came out on the 360. Brady and I played it all the time, and it was awesome. The Cars respond very well, and even though it's more realistic, it doesn't feel like you are playing some boring Gran Turismo racing sim, it feels like you are playing a game that you actually like. The addition of the bikes in the game bring something new and exciting. The bike respond very well and also you can do various stunts on them too, which makes it even more fun and entertaining when you are standing up and waving to the crowd, when you suddenly fly straight into a wall at 180 MPH.

There is a photo mode too, where you can pause and take photos in game. Then you can edit them in a photoshop-esq way. Adding things as filters, and warping the image, messing with the depth of field and so on. It is something fun you can play with for a while.

The Kudos points system is back and in full effect. You spend the Kudos on things like new cars and bikes, helmets, new tracks, and if you really really really like the game and want to spend a million Kudos Points, you can get a special gamer pic and unlock a special achievement as well.

The game is great and very realistic, without feeling to much like Gran Turismo. The new weather effects are fully detailed, you can see rain beading off the hoods of the car....that's a lot of detail.

Likes:

Arcade like feel, but enough to stand out from Arcade racers

Earning Kudos isn't very hard and lots of unlockable content

Weather Effects are extremely detailed

Playing online is simple and easy

Bikes are new to the series and are really fun to race with, especially when you are racing against cars

Realistic Damage on bikes and cars (unlike Gran Turismo)

Dislikes:

The AI is very unforgiving, It gets pretty though to play once you get about 60% of the way though the game. You can be in first place and then one little mistake and you'll be in last place and have to start the race all over again.

Takes quite a while to complete and unlock all the really good cars and bikes.

If you are a fan of Gran Turismo, this isn't what you want.

Overall: If you like racing games at all, this is a must buy. If you don't like Gran Turismo this is for you. If you do, there isn't anywhere near the amount of tweaking you can do to cars and bikes that will give you that 0.0003% increase in speed and power after tweaking your car for hours on end.