Gotham Racing 3

Project Gotham Racing 3
Developed by Bizarre Creations

The philosophy that drives Project Gotham Racing 3 is style and high fashion. It's not so much about race lines, precision drifts or even speed as much as it is about looking good in an exotic car. As a result, PGR3 is focused more on the visuals and on having a set of great cars in the garage.

Most races in PGR3 don't even have a clock, and your goal is simply to finish in first place and pull off the widest and longest drifts in order to rack up the most points (Kudos). In line with the theme of "looking good", PGR3 focuses on city based tracks: Tokyo, Vegas, New York, and London. These cities are faithfully modeled with realistic textures. Bizzare Creations has come up with tracks to fit within these cities. In addition to the urban tracks, PGR3 also features the Nurburgring Nordschleife and the F1 course at Nurburgring.

Project Gotham Racing 3 has a great selection of cars. Its 80 cars are about as eclectic of a group as the selection in Gran Turismo 4. While GT4 had more sedans and budget vehicles and famed historical cars like the SuperBird, PGR3 is focused on exotic sports cars. PGR3 doesn't simply stick to the cars everyone knows about (i.e. Ferrari F430 or the Ford GT) but they bring in the truly exotic designs such as the Koenigsegg CCR, Maserati MC12, Noble M400, Skyline GT-R Concept, and Ariel Atom. The game even has my car of choice, the Maserati GranSport. It's almost as if Bizzare Creations took a look at the best cars of Top Gear and Fifth Gear for inspiration. Adding to the experience is the fact that Bizarre Creations has modeled the interior cockpit of each vehicle.

Maserati MC-12

Another view

Skyline GT-R Concept

It looks better in real-life

American muscle

Britney Spears's car

PGR3 has almost universally been praised by the gaming press but I have to say that this is a game that I have to force myself to play (in order to review it) as opposed to a game that I want to play. The main flaw of the game is that the single player is fairly boring with generally uninspired tracks. Things look great, but the sense of speed and challenge is missing. Likewise, although the appeal is supposed to be centered collecting all of the exotic cars in the game, there are still nuances that are missing such as the airbrake of the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren or the shift indicator lights of the Ariel Atom in the cockpit. With the exception of the Porsches, it's difficult to actually see the gauges of the dashboard because the geometry is off. The game is great for the first few hours but it doesn't maintain its level of excitement after three or four hours into the game. Levels don't become more difficult and there's no sense of accomplishment after each race. Driving the Nurburgring Nordschleife isn't substantially more difficult that driving the New York city tracks.

Control of the vehicles also seems off. It's not a question about realism. PGR3 simply doesn't know whether it wants to be a sim racer or an arcade racer. As a result, the vehicles feel floaty and the player doesn't get a good sense of being able to direct the car in the way that he would like to.

Ariel Atom

Can you identify the car in the background?

My car of choice

Noble M-400

As the only game I can think of to feature the Maserati GranSport, I really wanted to like this game but it's no fun because it gets repetitive. So, this gives us our first clue in trying to determine what makes a game fun: variety. The variety of cars makes PGR3 interesting, but the lack of variety in actual gameplay is where it falters. Still, PGR3 gets great reviews everywhere and it is proof that graphics really do matter.