Who said Microsoft doesn't make good games? (Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox 360))

Member Name: daemonicragnorak

Product:	Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox 360)
Date:	18/04/09 (10 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Weather system is best one to date

Disadvantages: none

The Project Gotham Racing Franchise has been around for almost 8 years now and have been going from strength to strength despite being solely available for the xbox consoles.

When the first one came out in 2001 it was hyped up beyond belief with Bill Gates stating it was his favourite game, yet it managed to live up to it's hype.

Now with this forth instalment there was the danger of it just being the same game just with better graphics, same tricks for new money. However for once Microsoft have delivered something outstanding, a beautiful looking game with a vast amount of content that rivals even the Gran Turismos.

The main new feature is that they have included motorbikes for the very first time; not just as an extra either as there are some races is arcade mode which require motorbikes to be used. These new toys handle so much better than the cars and can allow you to win the career mode with great ease as long as you can avoid being knocked off your bike by the cars.

The cars themselves are good fun and like the bikes some of the challenges in arcade mode require you to drive cars. Whether you like minis, Aston Martins or even the bizarre Ariel Atom Supercharged 3000 there is bound to be a car that you want to race with every time.

As always with the PGR world the graphics are second to none, every car and bike is crafted so finely that in the camera mode you can zoom in on the badges and loose no detail.

As for the cities themselves, I found myself site-seeing as I drove several races which lead to crashing into the odd barrier by not looking at the road. The cities included are Quebec, New York, London, Tokyo, St. Petersburg and many more.

My favourite addition to the game is the new updated weather system; which has been updated so that effects every aspect of the race. Sure this may not be the newest addition in games; however it didn't just stop with a very complex weather engine built into the game, if you are connected to the internet while you are racing the game will connect to the PGR Weather Channel.

This will send data to your console about the real weather in which you are racing in and the game will model this for you, along with the real time at that city. This has meant I have only ever taken part in night races in Tokyo as I am in the UK, but this added feature is very clever.

If you don't like your fast-and-furious-esk Need for Speeds or your simply unrealistic Burnouts then this is the racing game for you. With eye-catching graphics to super-real physics engines you may wonder why you never tried out the PGR series before; if you have, then you wont believe how good it's gotten.

Summary: Brilliant graphics with some of best racing gameplay of all time