User Reviews (1 - 11 of 88)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Sluggish control

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I did not enjoy this game. Compared to a game such as Need for Speed - Most Wanted, it's controls were sluggish and the graphics inferior. I purchased this game for a few bucks at Amazon and sold it for about the same a few weeks later.

SoOoOo BoRinG!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: June 16, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is just race and get new cars. One of the most boring games ever. Flashy cars, great graphics, but no interesting features what so ever. I have Project Gotham 1 and 2. I got bored of them after 2 days. Take my advice, theres better games out there! Later.

pgr2 only for experts

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: September 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

the game is boring after you beat easy because ultimate cone challanges are to hard on silver and silver is the only difficulty worth beating except for the even harder ones.you may say i bought it to play on xbox live but to get any really good cars like the porche 911 gt1 you have to beat the game on silver which is easy until the first ultimate cone challenge.id say rent this game and see if you can beat it on at leat bronze.if you can and you HAVE xbox live then get it if you can beat it on silver or up then get it even if you dont have online.still i never think it should be as much as it costs.(...)the best car in the game you cant even get unless you have xbox live(...).

Rubber band handeling of cars completely frustrating,

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 7
Date: January 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game looks nice, sound good, but unrealistic handling of cars make it unplayable.

I bought a steering wheel in the hope that game handling of the cars would become more realistic than with the xbox controller.

In summary, it feels nothing like a real car.
Firstly, there is a time lag of almost a second between the time when you turn the steering wheel and when the car responds. It feels like there is a rubber band connecting the steering wheel to the tires.

Secondly, for the same angle of the steering wheel, the amount the wheels turn is dependent on your speed. This is completely unrealistic.

Thirdly, if you let up on the accelerator at high speed the car starts floating around totally out of control.

It seems that the designers tried to compensate for the limits of the hand held controller and did not change them for the steering wheel.

Other aspects of the game are good, but car handling is so unrealistic and frustrating that it makes you want to pull your hair out.

Fun for online play, but grossly unrealistic

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game is fun if you're interested in playing bumper cars, but unrealistic otherwise. The majority of the courses are easy to beat even at gold level, with about 10% being an unreasonable pain in the butt. Winning a race usually involves pushing other cars around (the game rewards you for this), and be ready to be spun around yourself - the computer will aim to hit you if you're heading the race by taking the inside line and ramming you as you're taking the corner. Should you try to do the same, you'll have a much harder time, as cars controlled by the computer are very resilinient to being bumped and in some law-of-nature defying manner just keep no racing faster than you.

A major nuissance is that you're always started at the last spot, and often the game will race perfectly until the last lap, where the leader makes a dumb mistake and bumps into a wall.. this game really tries your patience.

On the up side, graphics are fun, as is the option to pick your own music. Online game play is a lot of fun though, as everyone's on a level playing field. I swear the computer cheats when you're playing against it!

Over Rated.....

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: April 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Ok, people who give this game 5 stars must not have much experience with racing games. You can't judge a game by graphics only! This game suffers from lackluster races and lacking game play modes. The game is very boring to tell you the truth! There aren't many game play modes in the game and the gameplay it self kinda sucks. The cars control ackwardly, the tracks are usually short and bland, and well the game is just boring! At least in the Gran Turismo games you get to up-grade your cars with different parts, not too mention the game is soo much better. PGR 2 does not have much replay value either....the only good thing it does is wow people with it's graphics and thats about it. This game goes in my "trade in" bin!

Don't believe the hype !!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: November 23, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First of all, I just purchased this game because I was wanting a racing game for my XBOX. Let me start by saying, the only reason I gave this game 2 stars in the overall rating is because the graphics are great. The game looks really nice, but the controls are absolutely horrible. Miserable in fact. When I sit down to play a racing game, or any other game for that matter, it should not take so much effort to get your car to steer and handle turns, slides, etc. The controls are miserable, and I found the game making me angry. I am selling this game asap and getting something else worth my time. I highly recommend NOT buying this game. A huge waste of time and money. I love XBOX, but give me Super Mario Kart anyday. At least you can control that game without losing your mind, and you can have fun with it. Unlike PGR2. Don't buy it. Trust me.

Good....but not as good as the first one...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: January 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

First off...I don't have X-box live; so I'm ONLY covering the single-player aspect of this game; which is, quite frankly, a little disappointing. The developers have taken many of the things that made PGR1 GREAT and tweaked them in a fashion that ranges from a little disappointing to outrageously infuriating. It almost seems as if the game was rushed into release because Microsoft needed a Christmas title that could (at least partially) help deflect lost revenues from the disappointing delays of Halo 2 and Half-Life 2.

This isn't to say that the game isn't fun. A lot of fun. Heck, it's probably the best racer available on the X-Box right now...with the possible exception of its predecessor. It's just that my expectations were extremely high and I wanted something that was far better than PGR1...what I got was something that IS better in some ways, but, unfortunately, depressingly worse in a few CRITICAL ways.

The Good:
-- Graphics: Best. (racing) Graphics. Ever.

-- Sound: Praise the gods of video-game sound design, they finally figured out how to make a racing game where (most of) the cars don't sound like they just tried to force a huge helium balloon out of their exhaust pipes. Games like this are why having 5.1 is worth the expense.

-- Vibration that MAKES SENSE: In stark contrast to most other games that shake the controller with no discernable relevance to what's happening on the screen; PGR2's developers got it right. You can actually FEEL each individual crack on a cobblestone street. Very cool!

-- Location, Location, Location: Bunches of new cities to lay rubber in. (But nothing that even comes close to rivaling San Francisco in PGR1.)

-- Ferrari Enzo, Porsche GT1, Koenigsegg CC, Saleen S7, Jaguar XJ220, Delfino Feroce, Trident Iceni. Need I say more?

-- The Showroom: Think Halo in a car dealership...minus the whole "blowing up aliens" thing.

The Not-So-Good:
-- The "In-Car" View: A previous reviewer was absolutely right when s/he lamented the absence of the big PGR1-vintage numbers ticking away on the screen, keeping you informed of your Kudos score. In PGR2, you have to look away from the road in order to check your score...which is displayed in teeny white numbers and looks suspiciously like a designer's artifice specifically engineered to distract you into smashing into the wall. Also, time updates are, indeed, pasted DIRECTLY into your field of vision. Very distracting.

-- The Car Class System: In PGR2, cars are grouped into classes. From the dinky little Sport Coupe class (think Mini Cooper) all the way up to the Ultimate class (Think Ferrari Enzo). This is all fine and good, but there is NO way to drive cars from different classes against each-other. Think an Audi S4 could outrace a Nissan Skyline GTR? Too bad, you can't find out. 1967 Chevrolet Camaro RS/SS vs 1965 Ferrari 375 GTB? Sorry! This restriction takes an immensely important part of PGR1 completely out of the game. Racing cars from different "genres" against each-other was not only necessary to get through the game, it was also a freaking BLAST!

--The Time Attack/Arcade Race/Cone Challenge games: The races themselves are just peachy. The problem is, YOU CAN'T PICK THE CAR YOU WANT TO DRIVE! Now, it may seem that I'm nit-picking, but the little text dialogue saying, "this race uses (insert car here)" drives me NUTS! Why can't you chose from the cars you've actually gone to the trouble of unlocking and race them in these modes? Oh wait. I know. It's because, with the incomprehensibly stupid upgrade token system (more on that in a moment), if you COULD do this, you'd be able to drive the Enzo in every race after about 2 hours playing the game...and that's just too easy. The thing is, during the course of the game, it's impossible not to develop a favorite car or two; and becoming proficient at driving that PARTICULAR car against better competition and more difficult courses is one of those challenges that made PGR1 unbelievably fun...and one of those that PGR2 is sorely lacking.

-- Unlocking New Cars: In PGR1, you unlocked cars by completing certain tasks. Complete the Arcade Race "Very Hard" level with all gold medals, get a Ferrari 355. Can't pull that off? YOU DON'T GET THAT CAR! In PGR2, just by playing your way through the game, you'll earn kudos and level up, gaining upgrade tokens that you use to purchase cars. All of the cars in the game are unlocked this way...even the "special" ones. The Enzo...possibly the most capable car in the game? 22 tokens. If you're at least marginally competent, you'll accumulate that somewhere around the 2nd or 3rd race series. But, "purchasing" the Enzo won't do you any good, because, as previously mentioned, YOU CAN'T DRIVE IT until you reach the Ultimate series. So just keep banking these tokens and hope that you'll get to at least ONE race series where the seriously cool cars are drivable before you get bored with the game and quit playing it.

The frustrating thing is that it's not complicated to design this properly. Just make the super-cars impossible to unlock until you've played your way through most of the game; forcing you use your driving skills to progressively unlock better cars, earn more kudos, and (finally!) unlock the exotics. Heck, they could even have kept the upgrade token system...just make the Koenigsegg cost about 250 tokens; thus be UNOBTAINABLE until you've worked your way through damn near all of the challenges in the game!

All in all, Project Gotham Racing 2 is a wonderfully rendered, beautifully polished, great sounding game...that lamentably falls short of its predecessor when it comes to actual gameplay. Which is too bad, because this franchise has the potential to be the best racing undertaking of all time. Hopefully, this incarnation of Microsoft's flagship racer will just be an unimpressive blip on an otherwise spectacular radar picture...

GrainBrewer

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: February 04, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Great game, and very realistic, but a few very annoying features.

What is the point of saving up kudos to buy/unlock new cars if you are stuck with a limited selection for the level you are at? I saved all my kudos and blew the wad on the Enzo Ferrari so I could blow the compact convertible class (third tier) out of the water, but guess what? You can only use a car within it's respective class... so the best you can do on that level is get a lame BMW or Boxter, and let me tell you, if you can win the Gold class it's amazing, forget about the Platinum. The cars at the top level not only drive in flawless lines without mistakes, they are all against you. For example, in the street race mode at gold or platinum levels, you start at the back of the pack, then the first two cars speed off at perfect pace while the other 5 cars will basically slam on their brakes in front of you to stop you... it's unrealistic that they wouldn't try to win the race rather than all work together to stop you.

I'm not one to cruise through games in "God-mode", but I don't like the limited kudos/reward system. What if I want to race one of the nicer cars without putting in hundreds and hundreds of races to get there? Other than these limitations though, it is a very enjoyable game with increadible realism and quality graphics.

It's Not Gran Turismo.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 03, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The good:
Great graphics. Large number of tracks and vehicles. Good multiplayer.

The bad: (mainly for singleplayer)
You can't tune or tweak your car (no mufflers, turbo kits, increased displacement...).

Progression in single player mode is linear. You MUST go through the race categories in a certain order. You're also limited in the selection of vehicles you can race in a given category. Pretty much, you drive the default vehicle until you get enough kudos to unlock the best vehicle in the category, then finish off the rest of the races. Completed the category? Start over with yet another vehicle type, learn it's handling, and rinse and repeat.

If you like taking different cars w/ different modifications on races, and the progression of tweaking your vehicle, this game doesn't stand up to GT. Nothing quite like taking a 1000+ HP drag racer and trying to run Autumn Mini =)

If you're hunting for a good arcade multiplayer racing game, this qualifies nicely. If you want one with oncoming traffic and more emphasis on destruction, go with the Burnout series.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next 

Actions