Project Gotham Racing

THE BAD:
Seemed to be lacking in options and things to do
Fewer cars than other games

SUMMARY:
Project Gotham Racing is one of the few games I've played for the Xbox, but it was worth my time. One of the best points of this game that others don't have (that I'm aware of) is the Kudos scoring system. In this game it's not all about getting round the track in the shortest amount of time.

I first played this game in a shop in my town centre and it did impress me. The first thing I noticed was that I was getting points for sliding my car around corners instead of taking the fastest route through the corners. I was also getting points for overtaking, getting all 4 wheels off the ground in a jump and for going over bumps in the road. This appealed to me as it was something different that I hadn't seen before in other games. Of course you did have to try and win races as well just like other racing games, but this one required you to do it in style. If you hit a wall while racking up Kudos points in a slide, for example, you would lose all the points you were accumulating in that one instance and you'd get a nice "D'oh" (from the Simpsons) just below where the score was. I thought that was a nice touch in the game, even though it was only small.

Saving up your Kudos points would enable you to buy faster cars so you could compete in later races. There wasn't nearly the choice of cars you get in games like Gran Tourismo but there is enough to get by. Like most racing games, knowing the tracks you were racing on was important to win some races as the opponents were pretty fast. You could also do practice races where you could race fast cars it takes ages to save up for on tracks against another person.

While the game impressed me at first I did become bored with it fairly quickly, quicker than most games. I think its downfall for me was that there just seemed like there wasn't a whole lot to do. While Gran Tourismo had many types of races, and lots of cars, this game just seemed to be lacking in these areas. I'm not a car freak by any means but the ability to customise my cars appealed to even me and you can't do that here. All you get to pick is the colour of your car, and you can only select certain colours on some cars, which was slightly annoying.

This game was fun while it lasted, but unfortunately it didn't last that long for me. The fact that there wasn't a whole lot to do in this game was the main reason this game didn't hold my interest for long. I feel that many other things could have been done with this game and that it was rather bland after a while which is a shame because the initial idea was fresh and interesting.