Game Information
Genre: Racing
Developer: Bizarre Creations
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
# of Players: 1-8
ERSB: N/A
Scheduled Release: November, 2003
Also Coming For: None
Official Website: Project Gotham Racing 2
The first Project Gotham Racing launched with the Xbox in November, 2001. In Gotham, it was never about how fast you could drive, but how you drove fast. The game took a different approach to how the racing genre could be played. Drivers were rewarded with kudos, a point system in which the player could “combo” for style and clean runs; many of the challenges presented did not have you racing against competitors at all. It quickly garnished much critical acclaim, and went on to become one of the fastest and best selling titles on Microsoft’s black box. This November, Microsoft and the European developers at Bizarre hope to once again take the top spot on the Xbox’s racing charts with Project Gotham Racing 2.
Taking center stage in PGR1 was the accurate recreation of real life locations. We got to explore various sections of 4 world famous cities: San Francisco, New York, London, and Tokyo. Building upon this, the sequel is rumored to offer more then double the number of drivable locations. Seen in screens or reported thus far are: Florence (Italy), Chicago (USA), Washington D.C. (USA), Barcelona (Spain), Moscow (former USSR), Edinburgh (Scotland), Sydney (Australia), Hong Kong (China), and Yokohama (Japan). Each area has been lovingly crafted with hours of research, trips and literally thousands of photographs, all to ensure realism and immediate recognition of actual city streets and skylines.
As can be gathered from the screens, these environments also look considerably better then their PGR1 counterparts. The new engine has allowed for much more polygons to be used to create the cityscapes, with full 3d windowsills, patios and more on nearly every building. Gone are the days of the textured box city. The added detail found in PGR2 can be explicitly seen in Yokohama’s roller coaster and ferries wheel and Australia’s Sydney Harbor Bridge. But the cities aren’t the only thing that has improved graphically since the first outing. Almost unbelievably, the cars are sporting some terrific improvements of their own. PGR2 features a much-improved lighting system, which allows for the cars to self-shadow, as well as impressive glares and “over brightening” effects. Expect 60 fps, excellent weather and time of day implementation, some of the best texture work, and zero pop-up. All in all, the game looks entirely reworked visually to really take advantage of the Xbox’s power.
Really focusing on the thrill of driving, Bizarre have decided to include a variety of controllable cars. Obviously, there are the performance sports cars from the affordable, to the “dream car” status (including the first appearance of Ferrari’s brand new Enzo in a video game!), but this time out there will also be classics and SUV’s. We’ve already seen some of these classics such as the Mercedes Gullwing and American muscle cars, the GTO and trans-am. In fact, some of the challenges of PGR2 will limit the entry car to these specific classes of vehicles. It should be interesting to feel the handling characteristics of these beasts versus the best sports cars of today.
It will take some fancy driving skills to unlock all of these cars, and that is where the kudos become important. You will be able to use your earned kudos to purchase vehicles from a 3d showroom which you can freely explore and even test-drive different cars! The kudos system has been reworked and modified and now features 12 different ways to earn them (overtakes, nice slides, 2 wheels etc). Bizarre has also seen fit to take some frustration out of the previous system. Now, when you misjudge a corner, and bump against a wall, you may only lose a portion of the acquired kudos. The game will now calculate in real time, the severity of the penalty for collisions based on speed and angle of impact. Long gone are the days of the insane, lap long combo, only to have all of those kudos disappear at the slightest nudge of a guardrail.
Along with the graphics and gameplay, you can bet the audio aspect has been improved as well. Microsoft has seen fit to add roughly 150 licensed music tracks to the games soundtrack, on top of the ability to rip your own custom soundtrack from the hard drive. Each city will once again have their own individual radio personalities, and will play music appropriate for each different part of the world.
Project Gotham Racing 2 will undoubtedly feature many game modes both on and offline. Not much has been said about specific modes for these, but you can likely expect the various race modes from the first game to make an appearance in both single player and multiplay. In fact, PGR2 has been touted as one of Microsoft’s big Live titles this holiday season. 8 player racing online is already in, and plays flawlessly. Content downloads are being discussed, and may range from cars and tracks to even new cities! Expect very big things from Live play in this game. Project Gotham Racing 2 is scheduled to release November of this year.
