Project Gotham Racing 2 Hands-on

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Showboat driving to the extreme.

By Jon Robinson

Kudos to Bizarre Creations and Microsoft. No they didn't just bust a donut and fly by the competition for a first place finish, not yet anyways. Kudos go out to the team for creating a sequel that scores in both style and substance. Project Gotham Racing 2 already appears to be one of the most impressive racers on the Xbox and they still have four months of development before the game even ships.

Kudos in the videogame world are tough to come by these days, but they've been well earned here. Allow me to explain.

The developers of PGR2 are so hardcore, that when they designed the eight cities, they captured everything right down to the finest detail. Want proof? We're talking meticulous details, down to bump mapping all of the buildings so that you can actually see bricks and stucco, not to mention going around every city and getting licenses to all of the stores so that they can appear exactly as they do in real life. That's right, as you drive through Red Square in Moscow, you'll see the same stores you'd see if you visited on vacation. And while not many know the streets of Red Square good enough to shout out Big Ulga's Shoe Repair on the corner of Stalin and 22nd, you might recognize the Nordstrom's building in Chicago and the Starbucks at every turn (make mine a double mocha chai latte with a shot of vanilla to go).

But the kudos aren't just for the slick stylistics, they're for the gameplay, and, well, the Kudos. Like the original game, PGR2 is built around earning Kudos points by performing various racing tricks and maneuvers like power slides. This year, there are more ways to earn Kudos like pulling a 360, drafting a rival racer, and even overtake drafting. The Kudos point system is also a bit more forgiving as you no longer lose all of your Kudos points on a powerslide if you simply knick a wall. You'll lose some, but not all. At the end of each race, the game will even breakdown exactly how you earned every Kudos point, from slides to position.

And if you think you're the Kudos king, you can now log onto Xbox Live and your Kudos points will be dumped onto a real-time leaderboard so you can see how you rank against other racers across the country. Speaking of Live support, you'll also be able to race against eight other competitors online, and the developers are hoping to increase the number of cars to 16 by the time the game's released. If you're not hooked up to Live, you'll still be able to use a system link to race against other gamers, or drive in split screen (horizontal or vertical) head-to-head action.

Before each race starts, you'll have a ton of variables you can adjust, from sliding difficulty levels to weather conditions to the amount of Kudos points you need to collect to advance to the next level. One of the biggest complaints the developers heard about the first game was that it was too difficult to move past certain cities. In PGR2, Bizarre Creations hopes to put those concerns to rest, giving gamers more input into the level of racer they think they are, and enabling them to race to that level. That way, you'll be able to advance in the game at your own level, while the expert racers can advance at theirs.

Getting my hands on the wheel for the first time, the handling feels a bit more sim-like and tighter than the original game, while at the same time never loosing its arcade hook that made it such a favorite. It just felt like I had more control over every turn, every slide, every punch of the accelerator, and in a racing game, more control is never a bad thing. When your car smacks a wall, you will notice damage, and it really does make you sad to see your Benz take some bumps and bruises, especially after you just paid top dollar, or in this case, Kudos points, to buy it. Luckily, even though the car might start looking like a hoopite, it never stops performing like a champ, as damage doesn't affect handling or performance. Another aspect of the game that really gives you a sense of ownership is the garage. You actually get to walk around your garage in a first-person view and check out all of your cars from every angle. Cars that are hidden in the game that you haven't yet unlocked appear in the garage with a cover draped over them, then when you're finally able to take them out for a test drive, the cover will be liftedyou're your new ride unveiled.

And when you finally do take one of your classic cars out on the open road, you can cruise to the tunes of over 50 bands. The game also supports custom soundtracks just in case one of Microsoft's top 50 don't get your feet tapping or you'd rather listen to something more along the lines of your personal music tastes -- a little Benzino in my Benzo, please.

All in all, Project Gotham Racing 2 is being built into one of the most promising racers speeding toward the holiday season. If the Xbox Live races are anything like the single-player events, gamers are in for a ride that's going to be faster and more furious than Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Tyrese combined.