Throughout the years, racing games have been evolving year by year. Companies have been developing new ways and ideas to create racing games that look incredibly real and drive as if it were in real life. Project Gotham Racing 2 is one of those games with the most advanced physics system and graphics engine. Project Gotham Racing 2 was created to be the ultimate arcade racing game for the Microsoft Xbox Game Console. With over 100 cars and over 100 tracks to race on, you’ll be busy with PGR2 for a while.
Once you boot up PGR2, you will get the option to create a New Profile so you can start playing in the Kudos World Challenge series. There will also be the Instant Action mode which will instantly put you in a race with a random map and car that the computer chooses for you. Once you get done with creating your profile and etc, the game will try to log you in to Xbox Live rather or not you are in Multiplayer mode. It does this because it updates Single Player stats online.
When you log into your profile, you will get the Single Player, Multiplayer, Ghost Challenge, Options, Content Download, and an option to Sign out of Xbox Live. In the Single Player mode you will see the Kudos World Series option which is a whole bunch of races that you must attend to get every car and track possible. In the Arcade Racing mode, you can do some Street Racing, go for a Timed Run, or test your handling skills in Cone Challenge. There’s a Time Attack mode if you feel like you’ve got the need for speed. Once you start off in the Kudos World Series, you begin with the lowest class of cars. As you progress through the game, you will be promoted to higher classes. You get Kudos Tokens for completing the Class challenges which, with the tokens, you can buy more cars to race with both offline and on.
Once you select which car you want to race with, you must choose the difficulty in which you want your opponents to be. The harder the level you complete the entire game in, you will receive a better, faster car as a prize. Every time you complete a race in this mode, your stats and results get updated on Xbox Live to see how you compare to other racers. When you buy cars from the Showroom, (which shows every car in the game) you will be able to use the vehicle in online competition as well. The Kudos World Series includes everything from Street Races, Cone Challenges, One on One racing, and Speed Camera challenges. It basically jams all the modes of the game into a single mode.
The Single Player mode is fun and exciting but, what can compare to “live” competition either with a friend over at your house or seven other people on Xbox Live? First off, there is the Split Screen mode which you and three of your friends (four in total) can compete against each other. You can set what city you want, which track you want to race in, the number of laps, the weather, and the time of day which could be either day or night. Then, all the fun begins.
Multiplayer on Xbox Live is a whole different story. You get to search for a quick match which automatically puts you into a random online game. You can do a custom OptiMatch search with the City and Map of your choice, the number of laps, vehicle class, and etc. Believe it or not, you can even set what cars you want to be restricted in the race you search for! If you don’t feel like joining anyone’s game, why not create your own? You have the same exact options in creating an Xbox Live match as you were to search for one in OptiMatch. Once you’re set, you start the game and wait for others to join your server. When a good amount of people join your server, and once everyone is ready, you start the race for the finish line. Competing against seven other people isn’t easy as it may seem, for you might find it surprising difficult.
With the Xbox Live Communicator, you can talk to your opponents as you race against each other. If you think it’s unnecessary to let people hear your real voice, then go ahead and put on a voice mask. People tend to get annoyed by some of the childish voice settings. The Xbox Live multiplayer mode in Project Gotham Racing 2 greatly increases the replay-ability which will keep you coming back for more time to time.
In this game, there are over one hundred (100) cars from every day vehicles you see on the street, to the most exotic vehicles on the planet! There is everything from sports sedans, to SUVs, to ultimate speedsters. It is something like automobile heaven for the car freaks that are out there. Every car in the game looks amazing! All vehicles look exactly like they do in real life. The one really cool thing about the visuals of vehicles is the way they get damaged when you smash and bash your vehicle against the walls.
The design of all the tracks from all over the word such as Japan, Australia, Sweden, Russia and etc. all look amazing. The detail of the cities and the roads are awesome!
When you damage your vehicle, you will see the side mirrors bending completely. You will also see the entire body of the car getting completely wrecked. The windows get shattered as well the headlamps and the headlamps. The graphics of Project Gotham Racing 2 are the best Gaming Headlines has ever seen in any racing game up to date! Everything from vehicle damage to city design is great!
The default music isn’t the best game music there ever was (which is basically soft-techno) so that’s why the creators of this game, just like in the first Project Gotham Racing game, allowed us to import recording music from the Xbox to the game, as you race. The ability to have custom soundtracks and not having to listen to the other two hundred (200) songs is great!All in all, Project Gotham Racing 2 is an astonishing arcade racing title. It has everything you could possibly want in a racing game. It has complete reality with vehicle damage and effect as well as the driving physics. You get all the modes both in single player and multiplayer that will keep you coming back for more every time. The ability to listen to your own music while you play is a definite plus to the game. With the upcoming Gran Turismo 4 for the Sony Playstation 2, Gaming Headlines thinks that PGR2 will put up a great competition. Only time can tell, and once it does, Gaming Headlines let you know. LK
