Review: Project Gotham Racing 4 (360)

With that last sentence the emphasis is on the "may have", because while we have no doubt that this is better than 3 we're still not 100% certain if it’s better than 2, which is a game we regularly played online right up to the arrival of the Xbox 360 years later. Time will tell. What’s helped is that Bizarre Creations have given the series a bit of a spring clean. The medal system has been shoved to the side and into the arcade mode, with a new calendar based career being at the heart of it all. Not unlike the EA sports licenses, the calendar shows what races are happening in the coming months. Once a racing event comes along you have the choice of playing in each specific tournament depending on how high up the ranking table you are. You're also given invitationals which unlock extra cars and bikes. Other unlockable items are found in the PGR Shop which will finally put your kudos points to good use as they're used to purchase this extra stuff. It shows that a lot more thought has gone into the single player experience, as while the previous games were fun, the setup was no different than an archaic racing title from the 90's.

Kudos is once again the word of the day for PGR4 and as the back of the box says, "Speed is nothing without style". Though this does somewhat ignore the tagline of the last game which pretty much banned all vehicles from the game that couldn't reach 170mph. Anyway, kudos points have been better implemented and can now be gained from everything from the usual handbrake drifts to the crazy two wheel stunts of the newly introduced motorbikes.

When the inclusion of bikes was first announced it was met with widespread concern as nobody knew how well it would work, and after about ten minutes with them in the demo our fears weren't subdued. Further on after about an hour's worth of playtime something clicked, we weren't just getting to grips with the handling, we were actually really enjoying ourselves. Pulling off wheelies down long straights, taunting our opponents, there are a number of things that make the bikes such an attractive option alongside the familiarity of the top class sports cars. As expected though you do fall off on occasions so the usual tactics (if you’re dirty like us) of ramming your competitors of the road isn't really an option. But it's a small price to pay for the exhilarating feeling of speed.

Another addition are the weather effects, which was a glaringly obvious omission from the last game.  Now you get snow, fog and a hell of a lot of rain, and we do mean a lot. So much in fact that they've even needlessly put it in the menu screens. As you'd expect the elements affect the handling, with one particular challenge early on in the career has you tackling the Nurburgring in the snow. Plenty of sliding ensued in a challenging yet rewarding experience.

So far much praise has been unloaded on the game, but it's not perfect. Weather effects may effect the handling though graphically they're not as impressive as other games and really overall it doesn't look like much of a leap ahead of previous Project Gotham title. Aside from the visual aspect, the online menu is a classic case of throwing all the options on the screen and hoping they appear in sort of well laid out order. They don't. It’s a very un-user friendly interface that really should be better organised.

That's really all the complaints we have. An excellent online mode (as always) is the icing on an almost perfect cake. Bizarre have even had the decency to include a brand new version of Geometry Wars, subtitled Waves, to keep people amused. With PGR4 the series may have reached its peak and it's going to be interesting to see how Bizarre Creations try and top it.

Rating: 9 / 10

Words by Adam Gulliver