Gotham 2: Direct Feed Gameplay Videos

X03: Our hands-on with the latest version of Gotham 2 results in detailed new impressions, lots of new screens, and 32 hi-res, direct-feed gameplay videos.

After waiting many months, we've finally taken delivery of the latest Project Gotham Racing 2 code, and we're pleased to tell you - it's utterly fantastic. The game is near complete and it seems only minor tweaking and final touches need to be done before the racing masterpiece goes gold. We're celebrating the game's arrival in preview form with full impressions, screenshots and masses of hi-res, direct feed gameplay videos.

The most immediately obvious thing to us was the absence of the original four cities, which for some reason we'd been under the impression would be included. It would certainly be a better package with New York, London, Tokyo and San Francisco, but we can see why they haven't been included - this is a completely new game with a staggering ten cities included.

The amount of work that's gone into building these ten real-life cities is breathtaking. Every surface, river, fence, tree, streetlight and landmark is there and completely authentic. Whether you're in Hong Kong's Convention Center area, Sydney's Harbour or Yokohama's Bay Area, you can't fail to be amazed at the quality of the architecture - especially in awesomely busy settings such as areas of Hong Kong and Yokohama, truly complicated mazes of urban concrete.

Details such as flying birds and leaves blown in the wind look great. Yokohama even features a giant theme park with a huge moving roller coaster. Washington D.C. is pretty impressive and Barcelona is beautiful and radiant with lots of palm trees. Circuits in cities like Moscow, Edinburgh and Florence are absolutely delightful to behold - the texture detail on the latter is completely phenomenal. Chicago is enormous and overwhelmingly good looking. If we mention Nurburgring and Stockholm, that's all ten listed I think. You can see all of the cities moving and some of the best vehicles in the game, in our videos below.

Quite how they managed to actually construct it all in the last two or three years - ten massive cities - is beyond us. It might have something to do with the fact they've been making Gotham-style games since about 1998. Whilst I haven't been to any of the cities in the new game, those of us at Kikizo who have (one of us is from Hong Kong, another from Sydney) completely vouch for their authenticity, just as I was blown away by Gotham's original four cities - all of which I've been fortunate enough to experience.

In gameplay terms, Bizarre Creations have outdone themselves in equal measure. The original Gotham is one of the best designed racing games ever. Of course, this isn't because it tried to imitate Gran Turismo in terms of realism - it didn't - and nothing is likely to come anywhere close in terms of real driving simulation. The handling, which is pretty much to the same standard in Gotham 2, was authentic enough for any gamer without 'realism overkill', but the real genius was the old fashioned stuff - level layout and the scoring system.

Everyone familiar with Gotham will know about Kudos - the system that rewards the driver's style and the measure of success. Without earning sufficient Kudos points, you can't progress through the game and unlock all the best cars. To earn it in Gotham 2's 'Kudos World Series' event - the main part of the game - you'll have to compete in different challenges, taking place on literally hundreds of different circuits designed across the ten cities. Each challenge falls into about fifteen different categories, according to vehicle class. The challenges include arcade style Street Races, One on One races, and the fantastically addictive cone challenges, along with new additions such as Speed Camera challenges. The principle is the same as before: depending on the difficulty level that's right for you (the five settings cater for all skill levels including freak genius), the layout of the cones or Kudos points needed to complete the circuit are perfectly set by the designers, to make a highly challenging and furiously addictive videogame.

The Kudos system itself has been tweaked in places. Before, the system allowed you to earn points as you went along for a particularly efficient turn, a good powerslide, overtaking opponents, best laps, passing between cones etc. The more of these you do quickly in sequence, the bigger the 'combo' multiplier gets, and the bigger your overall points will be for that section of the track. Sometimes it was possible to connect an entire lap without breaking the Kudos combo (which happens after about three seconds), racking up massive points, and sometimes it was even necessary to win the challenge.

Before, if you messed up while earning Kudos, those same three seconds that are open to string together bigger combos were also when you were at your most vulnerable - if you messed up (by hitting a cone or bumping the roadside etc) all the Kudos points you were working to rack up would go to pot. Now, the system is different - only the combo earnings (your 'Kudos stash') are sacrificed, while you still get the actual Kudos points that were in the main pot. As we make our way through Gotham 2, we will endeavour to decide why this has been done, although we're sure there's some good reason we can't work out yet.

In terms of audio and effects, Gotham 2 is unsurprisingly competent, although we'd like to see a few more recognisable music tracks by the time the game is released, especially since players now have the option to change the radio station or music track in-game without pausing, by pushing and moving the right analog stick. (If you don't push it first, it controls the viewpoint around the car instead, with the same buttons controlling the four standard views as before.) The original didn't disappoint in terms of music, and what's on offer here so far is still strong.

Graphically, Gotham 2 is a considerable improvement over the original, which itself was no ugly duckling. What really steals the show here is the level of detail on the car models themselves, and the new trickery that's been used to massively improve the lighting and reflective work since the original. There's so much technical work going on to ensure completely real-looking bodywork, it's now impossible for non-programmers to suss out exactly what's happening with those polygons. But it looks really, really good.

The reflective paintwork was the most ill executed part of Gotham 1's visuals, jerking around about five times a second. Now the environment, sun glare and everything is reflected and processed in synch with the rest of the graphics. All the other cars on the circuit are as detailed as yours, and also the drivers are now - when visible - much more realistically animated, hurtling around with the force of the action. The lighting is incredible, and when the sun is low and in front of you, the shadows of the car's own seats can be seen on the back of the car, looking completely perfect. The sky and distant background detail is now a 'dome', an infinitely large sphere, making for better background realism. It's all much more convincing and often photo realistic - which is why it looks so good in stills.

However, talking of events per second, we must point out Gotham 2's biggest visual shortcoming in this early version of code, which we will check on the 'final' status of when we interview Bizarre this week. Basically, the whole thing is running at around thirty frames per second, in contrast to the original's sixty constant frames. Before the video experts start arguing, we basically mean 'interlaced frames' - but as far as the games hardware is concerned, we're talking about thirty or sixty, making a big difference to the smoothness of the moving picture. You won't notice this in our movies, since most PC monitors are set up to display these kinds of video files without interlacing - i.e. if we were to post a Gotham 1 video to compare against, they would both look like 'thirty frames' to game-heads.

Nevertheless, it is completely noticeable when played with Xbox on the TV - and although it makes very little difference to the game as a whole, it's something we very much hope is to be rectified in the final version of the game. Some people argue it makes no difference but they're wrong; not only does sixty look better plain and simple, but in many ways it can improve gameplay slightly - especially reflex-based games where scenery rushes towards you at high speed. Whether you realise it or not, you can see what's going on better, is what it boils down to. Although there's definitely more detail on screen here, surely sixty is still achievable? But if it is a choice between the two, then detail and effects are the way to go. More people will be more impressed.

With the game not scheduled for release until Q1 next year, it's difficult to see what else needs to be done to improve this game. Another graphical point is a small pop-up / draw distance qualm, amusingly most noticeable on the White House, which we're sure will be fixed by the release date. Remember, Bizarre Creations is a high quality outfit - they know what they're doing. Also it would be good if they included the original four cities to add to the already overflowing list of unlockables. As mentioned before, we'll be sitting down with the chaps from Bizarre Creations at X03 on Wednesday to get all the answers, and more inside details on Gotham 2 - not to mention getting some quality time with the game over Live, so stay tuned for that and watch out for updates on this ludicrously good title.

Adam Doree
Director, Kikizo.com