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The game seems to have even more of a competitive spirit, even more so than the previous PGR titles, with the Career rating you as an amateur at first, but as you go up the career’s leaderboard make it all the way to Pro, and eventually a Legend. The Career is where you will spend most of your time, and it is set around calendar events, with each event having three stages. The actually events vary a great deal as well, from old fashion races, cone challenges, Kudos Challenges where you get as many stars as you can, and more. As you finish a set of challenges, you move from one region in the world to another, from Asia, Europe, United States, and so on.
As you progress through the Career and buy more cars you are given a bigger garage, and just like in PGR3 you are able to walk around in first-person mode to check your cars out, posters on the walls (which can actually be pictures that you saved) and what’s this? Geometry Wars Waves! Waves is essentially an extension of Evolved, and like the name suggests you go against the oncoming enemies in lines that come at you vertically and horizontally, with more of them coming at faster speeds as you progress. It sounds easy, but I think it’s actually harder than Evolved. Of course, there is also leaderboards for the game, but it doesn’t seem like a full Arcade version of the game will ever come to light. The bad thing about the new way they do the Career Mode is that they give you few times to actually go back and try again at an event that you think you could do better at, but thankfully that isn’t the same for the new Arcade Mode which shares a lot of similarities with how PGR’s Career Mode was in the past.
The weather effects are the other big addition to PGR4 with fog, rain, snow, and ice.
Arcade mode is now split up into chapters, with some of them having a particular theme, such as nothing but motorcycles in all the races, with some of them having to do with you playing on slick terrain. Arcade mode is a great compliment to the Gotham Career, and if nothing else it is something to help get newer PGR gamers primed and ready for the rest of the game. The time trials is something else that you can have some limited fun in, but seems out of place because it requires you to actually get through a track in record time, whereas the rest of the game is about driving fast but having stylish fun doing so. Overall the single player modes alone will take you quite a bit to complete, being even more difficult when changing from Normal to Hard, so don’t expect to beat it all in a weekend, week, or even perhaps a few months. Online you can do special events by yourself or in teams, custom, ranked, and so on. It can all be ranked, and you are ranked throughout the entire game on various things. The online racing adds some more depth to the game, with racing, Cat and mouse, and so on, but it doesn’t seem like they have changed the already great formula from last year all that much.
The environment detail is at an all-time high..
Visually Project Gotham Racing 4 is overall the best looking racing title you will find on any system at all. I say overall, because the environment is what sells it. They are far more detailed than even PGR3, store fronts are real with real companies, the lights and the spectacle of Las Vegas is captured perfectly, and at night, any locale with lots of neon running through the city will stream by and reflect off of your car impressively.
The car and motorcycle models are solid, but leave something to be desired. They are only truly impressive when you can see that everything that surrounds you is reflected realistically, or that rain splatters, runs down, and glistens realistically. There are other nice touches that you will notice also like when it does rain the crowd will actually bring umbrellas, so that means for all the weather changes there are different sets of crowds.
The menu design is stylish as well, but it almost feels to basic. There is a little customization in the cars, but nothing that will really impress, or probably interest you. The photo mode is back in the game, along with a new PGR On Demand that lets you upload your photos and recorded videos for people to see, as well as check out the photos on the internet similar to how you could in Forza 2.
The sound is pretty decent, but that same damn Prodigy song playing over and over in the menus becomes tiresome, so thank God for custom tracks. The overall depth of the soundtrack isn’t quite as good as the past PGR titles, but it is at least more relevant with more popular music in it. The cars all have pretty decent noises to them, with each being echoed or tuned to sound just right depending on how you have the camera positioned by they don’t sound like they have enough “oomph” to them, and depending on your setup, they can all end up sounding like the same car.
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8.9
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Overall PGR4 offers quite a bit for veterans and new players a like. The way the career mode is setup isn’t as punishing as the past, so it won’t let people down even if they do badly. The new arcade mode is a welcome touch as well, especially when it hasn’t really changed at all over the years, and online is the same as ever with plenty of competition for everyone. Visually the game is a spectacular achievement, even if the vehicles, the part that matters most aren’t the best part. The weather is great, and the bikes are as well for the most part so if you were a fan of the past PGR titles, or a racing fan at all I highly recommend this.
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