by:	December 27, 2004

First, the basics. Like Metropolis Street Racer, Project Gotham is half-racing and half-kudos. Racers must not only finish ahead of the pack, they must also do it with style. These style points (called "kudos") are awarded for successful power slides, two-wheel action, and even getting a little air. Just stay clear of the rails and you're all set.

Unlike Metropolis though, Project Gotham's kudos system is a lot more lenient. In MSR, you would lose kudos every time you bumped into the rails. You would even lose kudos every single time you touched a car, making it very tough to be an aggressive driver. And since the only way you could progress in the game was to earn lots of kudos, MSR turned out to be a pretty tough game.I'm happy to report that Project Gotham has gotten rid of these problems. Now you can use other cars to help with hairpin turns, cut people off, and even ram your opponents with no penalty. The worst that can happen is negating the kudos you were accumulating by running into the rails. It's just like wiping out in Tony Hawk. The kudos are “banked” if you have not hit a wall, another car, etc. for a short amount of time. And you can’t lose the kudos that are banked.

You earn Kudos as bonuses for placing in certain races, pulling off stylish moves, or just generally kicking ass. In order to progress and earn new cars, you have to race in each of the 3 modes (the Quick Race, the Arcade Race, and the Kudos Challenge). The Quick Race mode pits you against 5 other cars in a classic battle for 3rd, 2nd, or 1st. You progress through various cities and try to get at least a bronze to advance to the next city. The Arcade mode is purely for Kudos. Yes, you have to get very good at going through cones and pulling off cool slides and 360s to earn at least a bronze. The Kudos Challenge is my favorite mode. You work your way through an array of different races including the good old me vs. 5 other cars, one on one. The overtake challenge (pass "x" number of cars before time runs out), speed challenge, and several other creative and challenging races, all succeed in putting your driving skills to the test. As you complete challenges and win races, you unlock new things such as new tracks, helmets, and cars.

In the beginning, you'll only have a few cars to choose from, but as you progress in the game you'll unlock some fancy pants cars including an Aston Martin Vanquish, a Porsche Carrera GT, and a Ferrari F50. The only downer is that there isn't much else. As far as I've seen, there are only about 30 cars to choose from - a far cry from some of the other racing games we've seen that offer massive amounts of cars. It's definitely enough to get the job done, but more would have been nice, especially since there is no tuning. An awesome feature that wasn't found in MSR is damage modeling for the cars. I have always been a big fan of destructible cars and Project Gotham just reminded me why. Take aggressive driving to another level as you smash, bash, and crash into other the racers. Broken headlights, massive dents, and scrubbed up sides help bring the driving experience to life. I'm just glad there are no insurance agents to worry about.

For that matter, the graphics are pretty cool. The cars look smooth with nice reflections and some of the surface textures you drive over simply rule due to some top-notch bump-mapping. Controlling the cars is a breeze. They're all pretty responsive and it won't take you long to start driving them like you own them. Bizarre gets thumbs up in this department.

While MSR had one of the lamest video game soundtracks I've ever heard, Project Gotham manages to scrounge up some very inoffensive tunes. But even better is the ability to play all of your own music straight from the Xbox hard drive. I guess this means you can put your Walkman away while playing this game.

Even though Project Gotham has got a lot of good things going for it, it still has problems, namely, track design While each of the four cities you drive though (San Francisco, London, Tokyo, and New York) looks good, everything feels ultra plain. You drive through empty city streets that are blocked off from everything else. Nothing goes on along the sidelines. There are no pedestrians watching, no birds flying overhead, nothing. Pretty hard to believe these world-class cities are so dead.

Another cool feature of Project Gotham is that if you live in one of the four cities featured in the game, you will recognize the street courses because Microsoft chose to use the actual street layouts and landscapes that those cities yield. It’s pretty cool to be racing down the highway you take to work every weekday as you play Project Gotham. The game's highly detailed, mapped out levels allow players to drive along photo-realistic city environments, clearly showcasing the Xbox's superior graphics technology. Each of the 12 areas in the four cities has been accurately modeled to capture their most intricate geographical details.

Project Gotham also has a nice enhanced multi-player mode. The four-player split screen allows players to race head to head, shoulder to shoulder against up to three friends at a time through realistic time-of-day and weather conditions. One of the best parts of the multi-player game is watching the replay of you and your friends battling for that first place position. The replays are virtually flawless and are hard not to shake your head at in awe.

Share this:

8 7 7 8 7 7

For the very first Microsoft Xbox racing title, Project Gotham Racing makes a strong showing. It's got decent (though not thrilling) gameplay enhanced by bang-up damage modeling. It's not a bad start for the Xbox racing genre at all.

Discuss this in the forums!