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The most ambitious racing game ever created!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 50 / 55
Date: November 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

While I am not a racing purist, I loved the first Project Gotham racing and enjoy playing most racing games on my Xbox and PS2. It also appears that I'm the only reviewer at this point who has completed Project Gotham 2.

For newbies and PG1 players, progressing through the game has been made considerably easier than the first game and you can easily teach yourself the ropes of each track and car class by playing for a bronze medal. Also you can jump into the super cars even if you haven't "unlocked" them in the single player game yet by visiting your garage.

If you're familiar with the series, or have read the other reviews, you know that Microsoft has taken everything that was great in PG1 and upped the ante. For newbies, you'll find Project Gotham 2 is the most intense street racing game ever created. The game begins as a solid "race for place" competition against computer opponents, and adds variety events like cone solemn racing, vehicle overtake and photo radar gun top speed contests. In each event, you can select the award level you want to try for, which establishes the difficulty and the specific objectives. Aside from the career mode (which PG2 calls the "Kudos World Series") there are also three arcade modes, two time attack modes and numerous online challenges.

Aside from the mere thrill of racing against human opponents, the online component has a few innovative features that set PG2 apart from any other racing game ever made. With online scoreboards you can see how you compare on each single player race you complete against everyone else in the world. Your rank, for each and every level is shown, along with the other gamers around you and the number 1 player. In addition, you can download "ghosts" which show you how the other people got their scores. And special trials are offered in the "ghost challenges" arena, where you can download the best performances from players around the world and try to beat them.

Technically, this game is perfect. The load times are extraordinarily fast and the game instantly returns you to the starting line if you restart the level (where many games would require lengthy reload time). There's also a seamless line between online and single player game play.

There are 10+ things about this game which are absolutely amazing:

1. Online features and functionality (see above)
2. Graphics. (This game looks best on a 480i HDTV)
3. Music. (And I'm a tough critic, but I really enjoy the songs on this game)
4. Vast number of tracks, well designed and well detailed.
5. Vast number of game modes
6. The environment has detailed elements, like leaves blowing across the track or birds flying in the foreground. Animations (like a ferris wheel) are in the background to provide even more graphic realism.
7. Your vehicle sustains incredible damage as you drive and while the performance is not affected, knocking out your headlights on a dark level makes it tough to drive!
8. Spectacular lighting effects!
9. Replayability
10. Achievable unlockable vehicles and accomplishable tasks
11. VERY cool secret unlockable cars!

There are 3 things that could have used improvement:
1. Often, the competitors will fall into two packs. If you get behind the second pack, they will intentionally slow you down or crash into you so that it is almost impossible to reach the front pack.
2. Some of the levels are so tight (one/two lane tracks) that playing the same level at easier difficulty is a negligible advantage.
3. In the final car circuit, (called the "Ultimate Series") the tracks are considerably longer and require an extended number of laps for no apparent reason other than to delay game completion.

There are 3 things about this game which are absolutely ridiculous:

1. Apparently the AI drivers all have PhDs in automotive physics because they know EXACTLY where to hit your car to send it into a spin. And they will do this to you more often then not.
2. When YOU hit a wall it's a reverse/back-up/steer out/gas procedure, but when an AI competitor hits the wall (or, OK, I run them into a wall), they somehow miraculously recover and are instantly behind you.
3. AI cars will often "take the line" while driving, meaning that they plow into you if you're already in the optimal apex.

All-in-all, this game suffers many of the flaws that all racing video games have, and while this game isn't absolutely perfect, it is -by far- the best racing game available on any platform.

An Amazing Game~Online and Off

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 15 / 16
Date: January 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

When Project Gotham Racing came out back in 2001, people had mixed feelings. It was a fun game, with an emphasis on style. It had great graphics, dozens of cars, and a huge single player. There were some problems though. It was extremely hard in areas, people wanted more cars (only 80 or so in the first), and the multiplayer wasn't very fun. Because it was hard for people to just pick up the controller and play...

Well, Project Gotham Racing 2 has everything the first one did, and so much more! Its funner, looks better, plays better, and isn't as frustrating. You can really get good at it, and you never really get stuck. Here's what I thought of Project Gotham Racing 2:

1) Single Player~ This game has an amazing single player. Dozens of tracks, hundreds of cars, and a ton of fun tracks. The game is divided into 2 sections: Kudos World Series and Arcade Racing. The overall goal is to earn Kudos (for every few thousand Kudos, u get tokens. With the tokens you can buy new cars). You can earn the tokens in either the World Series or Arcade modes.

In the Kudos World Series, you start out in the lowest class (there are 15 or so classes, each with about 10 cars). Once you select a class + pick a car, you can begin racing. You pick either to race, cone challenge, 1 on 1, pass as many cars as u can, finish a lap in a certain amount of time, etc... There are several challenges in each class. Each challenge has 5 difficulties: steel, bronze, silver, gold, or platinum medals. Once you complete a class (and earn as many tokens as u can while at it), you can move on to the next.

In Arcade Racing, you either street race or do cone challenges. You are given a car (no car classes here) and try to beat each challenge. There are also 5 difficulties here. Its pretty much just a chance to earn more kudos, and tone your skills.

The single player is huge, tons of cars, medals, and challenges to complete. Just single player alone will keep you busy for dozens and dozens of hours.

2) Online Play: This is where the game really shines. First off, online play is a WHOLE new game. There are no medals, no cone challenges. The only thing that comes with you from single player is the cars you unlocked. Once online you can race with friends, or just random people. You can use any of the tracks you unlocked in single player, or join a game with a map you haven't unlocked. When doing "Kudos Racing" you can earn Kudos to increase your Kudos Rank (online). Everyone starts at 1 on LIVE. After you earn your first few thousand Kudos, that will increase to 2. The next ten thousand, 3. The next twenty thousand, 4. etc... Its sort of a badge, telling people how good you are at this game.

Online you can race with up to 8 people. Voice Chat, rankings, friends, etc... And with Kudos Rank and racing, it really is an unlimited game online. There are really good people out there, so if the computer is just getting too easy, meet your challenge online.

3) Graphics~ The graphics in this game are...amazing. Cars get beat up, glass smashes, license plates become bent and smash off, doors get bent, etc... Your car really does look beaten if you have a messy race. Hard slides have smoke coming up from the tires. Screech marks remain in the steet for the race after a sharp turn. Crashes are greatly improved over the original. Nothing like walling a rival, seeing his perfect car smashed into peices, then driving off taunting. The graphics really do make the game better.

Weather changes are great in this game too. At night, its hard to see, and your headlights are your only guide around the track. Oh, if you break them, they dont shine anymore... When its raining, its hard to see. You car slides all over the track (go a little slower perhaps?) And it just looks incredible. The rain gets on the cars, makes them shine a bit. The track is wet and slippery. Weather really is fun in this game...

Overall the graphics are incredible, and really show off the XBOX's power.

4) Gameplay~ This game is just..really fun to play. Its a blast to hit a perfect slide, keep control, and leave your oppenant in the dust. Steering is hard, and knowing when to slow down, or how to take a turn is really important. In other words, newbs don't beat experts in this game, and you can really get good. This game has rankings online, and you can work your way to #1 (permanantly, as stats dont reset in this game)

Overeall this game is just a blast. Worth every penny, anyone looking for a fun LIVE game, or who loves racing HAS to buy this. 10/10

Thx!

obryanstars*

Finally a Gran Turismo for the Xbox - with multiplayer!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: November 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First the good news: you finally get rewarded for driving a good line. All us Gran Turismo 3 drivers used to be mighty confused about being rewarded for sliding through a turn when a well-executed line is faster and more elegant! So now you can slide, or nail the apex, and still get points. (You still get more for sliding though.)

It's a great racing game. The physics are good, and the vehicles respond as you'd expect them to. The AI is much better than the GT3 AI.

It's easier to unlock new cars, and you pay for them with Kudos tokens, rather than virtual money. You cannot upgrade the cars as you could in GT3, and I will miss that.

Playing against others is fun, just mute some of the trash talkers - or beat them.

great game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: October 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Get this game, its GREAT. No matter how good or bad you are, you can change the difficulty BEFORE the race. There are many reviewers who have been complaining about this game being too hard. And although I must say it is very difficult, I have met MANY people online who have beaten this on the HARDEST setting...it is therefore NOT impossible. This is not a game for those people who want to start out with an Enzo or TVR Speed 12, it does take time, but is overall worth it. Oh, by the way, did I mention the Great graphics, great sound (sometimes with an annoying sound track, but the ability to burn and listen to your own CD's), and great gameplay? I HIGHLY reccomend this game.

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...

An Xbox Must-Have!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 10
Date: January 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I'm not even a race game fan and this is simply amazing! I've only played it single-player so far but it is extremely addictive and fun. For a new player, the lower difficulty levels are easy enough so you can quickly begin buying new cars - and getting new cars does make a huge difference. There are some races and challenges I tried dozens of times in one car only to switch to another car and win the first or second time.

The graphics are awesome. The car selection and track selection are without peer. Handling, sound, everything changes depending on which vehicle you're in. The sense of speed is amazing, especially on the narrow streets of some European city tracks.

I highly recommend this game, especially to new Xbox owners and if you have Xbox live it's to die for.

The only problem is you'll never want to turn it off. You're always just a few kudos away for your next level or just a second shy of setting that next record. Prepare to leave the real world for hours if you're not careful!

Best Racing game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: December 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have to say this is the best racing game ever.

+Great gameplay, setup well so you play lots of cars and build your way up
+Race up to 8 people on xbox live
+Compete against the best players ghost
+Great even you you don't have xbox live
+Lots of options and races
+Over 100 cars to choose from
+Create custom sound tracks

-Can't tweek cars (I don't mind with the selection of cars)
-No in car view

If you like driving games you must get this game
I will probably end up playing this game more than any other I own

Best Arcade Racer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

First of all there's no tuning, parts, shops, or car altering. It's just all about driving with skill and comparing with everyone else. There are 3 types of playing, racing, cones, and time run. There's also multiplayer thru splitscreen, lan, and online. You unlock cars by earning kudos and you get kudos by winning medals. If you have Xbox LIVE then everything you do will be ranked online. This is very exciting feature if you are the type that wants to be the best. The game physics are great and the game is very fun. Get this game and then buy GT4 next year.

+ best graphics
+ more than 100 cars
+ great sound
+ 100s of songs
+ radio stations
+ many tracks
+ improved kudos trick system
+ damage models
+ detailed environment
+ real car sounds
+ download ghosts
+ lots of replay value
+ world ranking on each race/cone/time
+ FUN! VERY FUN! ADDICTIVE!

- no car number specs displayed
- could use more cars still
- can't see ghosts driving by itself
- can only change car color
- no people, trash, or debris
- car garage needs some hot girls
- very little advantage for manual drivers

Overall: Must have game for xbox. The only negatives are small ones. Lots of work was put into this game, it's high quality racer with tons of extras that keep you playing for a very long time.

Fabulous

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 24, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the best racing game on any system. The attention to detail is incredible. The various courses taken from various cities around the world are second to none. I like the kudos program with the opportunity to earn tokens and advance forward to new tracks and classes. The best thing about this game is the online features. The always live scoring is very cool. Be WARNED, this game is highly addictive. You will lose hours of sleep playing it.

Nicest looking racing game ever!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: January 30, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The first thing you notice in Project Gotham Racing 2 is how good it looks. The cars are beautiful, the buildings, reflections, everything. And the frame rate is still very good and smooth. Real time reflections and other effects are used a lot.

The game is also amazingly fun to play. The driving is realistic, but not too realistic. And its not too hard to finish the game, since it lets you choose a difficulty for each race. But of course you get less kudos points on the easier settings.

The tracks and cars are also incredible. The game lets you race many major cities in the world. And all the cities look exactly like they are supposed to. The game also features authentic radio stations in each city. In Stockholm you hear Swedish DJs and songs by Swedish artists and so on.

Almost every car you could ever want to drive is in this game. And the game has a fun showroom option, where you walk around in great buildings and pick different cars to test drive. If you walk into a special room you also see all the cars you have unlocked in Live.

What's bad about this game? Not much. Of course it's boring to drive the crappy cars in the beginning. It's also boring when you finish a series with nice cars and the next series has boring cars. But generally you get nicer cars as you progress in the game. And the AI in single player is extremly stupid. The computer cars drive on fixed tracks, and if you get in their way they hit you. On the other hand, the game doesn't punish you if you drive other cars off the road.

All in all it's a great game. Nothing really compares to this. Need for Speed: Underground is uglier and not quite as fun to play. The only other racing game on Xbox that almost matches this in fun is Burnout 2. But it is of course older and not so good looking.

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