Project Gotham Racing 4

Does Bizarre still shine or is it a rainy day in Gotham?

	Version Xbox 360	Developer Bizarre Creations	Publisher Microsoft	Genre Racing

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The other big new feature with Gotham 4 is weather, and it does make a fairly significant difference. The effect on gameplay, while subtle, is welcome, adding a layer of challenge, if not strategy, to events and races. The game even has its own Achievement for racing in tricky weather conditions, like ice which makes it tough to keep grip, or puddles forming that slow you down as you cut through them (hopefully splashing some spectators on the way). However, scoreboards do not distinguish between different weather conditions, making them almost redundant when it comes to competitive play.

It's the weather that is perhaps the best visual addition to the game as well. Rain, snow and particularly lightning all look awesome for starters, and every rain drop is properly rendered if you take a look and mess around in Photo Mode. PGR4 has the best skies we've seen in a racing game as well. The always-changing and artistically beautiful skies often exude some awesome dynamic lighting that make these cities look just stunning, while foggy weather or just a dull overcast setting all look reassuringly moody and true-to-life. It's the kind of game you want to show your friends. And this time it's genuine HD as well!

These cities and the different ways they can look are outstanding, and Microsoft did not do justice to the game's visual beauty when it showed it off at events like E3's showfloor or Leipzig this year with just one track, bland weather and just a bike, which looked dull. The real game and all its variety is, of course, the best looking game in the series. Even if it doesn't run at 60fps, which, with refined motion blur that looks at least three times better than in PGR3, is not the end of the world.

Texture pop-in is occasionally a little more obvious that we'd like it to be, but on the whole this is just not an issue. The licensing team has done a nice job on advertising placement and real-world brands in the game's cities and tracks. Oh, and I love the way the camera shakes about as you hurtle down a straight at top speed. Feel the power!

The visual class of the game transcends to the front-end as well. Navigation through the menus themselves in any mode is very straightforward and stylishly designed. And it has to be said that PGR4 surely boasts the best audio production values of any game out there; even navigation through menus produces dynamic music. In game, this is industry-leading audio customisation and tuning for any kind of gaming set up, proving that Bizarre has some of the best audio designers and technicians anywhere in the business. Although music in the series I never felt topped the high point of PGR1, I might just have bad taste, but PGR4 is decent enough, with a nice main theme from Prodigy and the likes of Kaiser Chiefs and Lilly Allen in there. More importantly, you can customise your playlist by genre or by specific songs.

PGR4 also offers a wealth of additional community features like Gotham On Demand, which lets you customise and search through the sorts of races from around the world that you want to download and watch, whether its the top twenty for a specific race or just drivers from your own country or group of friends, and obviously, upload your own. Then, there's all manner of unlockables in the PGR Shop, requiring up to one million Kudos points earned through the game, including goodies such as new bikes, cars, vehicle bundles and even race mode packs - you can unlock the multiplayer game mentioned earlier, Bulldog, in this area - the longer you can survive the bulldog's chase, the more Kudos you earn; if the bulldog catches you, join the chase. Loads of fun to be had over Live.

There's also an outstanding - if quite superfluous - garage to wander around in using FPS controls when you play the Career mode, showing off all your cars and with a suite that has a new version of Geometry Wars in an arcade cabinet. It looks ace and makes you want to pull a gun out and start shooting stuff. Project Gotham Shooting? Nah, we guess that's where Bizarre's other upcoming release, the Club, comes in. There's also a nice simple paint job editor for your vehicles.

There's definitely a little too much loading for my liking; sometimes (but not always) even when you want to just restart or retry a race, and even menus themselves take too long - and worst of all, at the end of a race when you're rearing to go on to the next event there's sometimes a delay as the machine tries to get leaderboard data from Xbox Live.

The level of scope and possibility with the world tour, 'invitational' vehicles and events, earning an obscene million kudos points, getting your replays and photos into the top twenty, getting on the global leaderboards, aiming for the game's fifty or so Achievements, and trying to complete the whole arcade mode with platinum medals, will keep dedicated players loving PGR4 quite possibly forever, making this a definite worthy purchase for newcomers and those who already enjoyed PGR3.

However, as the longevity with PGR4 is essentially online - perhaps for the next two years given the scale of the audience - the lack of weather-specific leaderboards could be a slight misjudgement that can be exploited and even damage the game for serious players.

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