Articles
By Nonny
Published: Mar. 4, 2007 9:50 AM
Life begins at 170mph, at least that’s what Bizarre Creations wants you to believe with the release of Project Gotham Racing 3. In a strategic design move which steers the series away from the plethora of vehicles available in its prequel (PGR2 on Xbox) this base criteria is the minimum achievable speed for any vehicle in the game. What this means from a gameplay standpoint is that the base line-up of cars in the game is now cut down to just 75 but all of them are now arguably the most desirable and expensive cars on the planet. This ethos of quality over quantity continues with the courses/locales on offer. Though before we experienced several different cities in PGR2 including Sydney, here the offering is five locales with London, Tokyo, New York returning, complimented by Las Vegas and the Nurburgring which now sports not only the “big kahuna” classic circuit but also the F1 circuit and combinations of the two.
So less courses and less cars surely must equal less game right? Well you would think so and question whether the reasoning behind this move was simply to make it to launch in time. However though while this is something which has divided most fans of the series the more you play PGR3 the more you come to appreciate what new things have been included in this iteration and more importantly what’s been fixed. What literally drives this game in terms of overall structure is driving with speed and style combined. By that I mean that the developers have sought to concentrate less on including a huge array of cars and tracks in an effort to focus solely on improving the game in terms of gameplay itself and giving the player more freedom. To facilitate this the menu has been split into Solo Career (both online/offline) and Playtime modes with the latter allowing anyone to literally pick up and play any of the modes in the game locally or online in unranked sessions, plus because of this shift in focus, most of the vehicles in the game are on offer right from the beginning instead of forcing you to endure extremely long hours of unlocking the more desirable rides.
In Solo Career though Kudos is back but in a big way with far more diverse categories for racking up some serious points. The familiar drifting and clean driving skills will rack up the Kudos as before but now categories include power over braking, hand-braking or counter-steering through corners... it’s a nicely tweaked and revised setup that rewards the skilful player at all times. It’s also here in Career mode that the now familiar race events can be found but again these have been revised and enhanced. Now alongside the usual speed/cone challenges, overtaking challenges and standard street race events there are new events such as hot laps, checkpoint racing and drift challenges. It’s more of the same, but the extra diversity to the proceedings serves to mix up the action and keep each of trophies different from the next.
The solo offline career mode spans across all of the locales in the game for a total of 23 Trophies but at the end of the day it is a pretty short lived affair (it can be completed on default difficulty in less than a week using just one car throughout) and in comparison it really is a streamlined version of what was in PGR2. The harder difficulties though (Gold & Platinum) do afford more of a stiff challenge for the hardened player but are still limited. Along the way whilst earning Kudos you’ll also earn Credits with which to purchase any of the cars on offer. The cars span classes E through to A and offer all sorts of manufacturers such as Ford, Ferrari, Lotus, Lamborghini, Porsche, Mercedes. It’s literally an exclusive list of some incredible vehicles and certainly there is something for everyone’s tastes. Ultimately you’ll start buying your own car collection in the game as you spend your hard earned credits and Bizarre Creations once again knows any car enthusiast likes to show off their vehicles in style. For that reason the Garage mode is back again, only this time in amazing fashion.
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