Project Gotham Racing 4 – 360 – Preview

E3 2007 Preview

With Forza Motorsport 2 selling well and
generating a fair amount of critical acclaim, it may be easy to forget about
Microsoft’s other flagship racing series, Project Gotham Racing. However, the
next entry is well on its way to being released, and is set to boast brand new
features to put it a cut above the rest in the racing genre. PGR 4 will offer a
revamped career mode that puts you as the star of the game over the vehicles,
twice the locations as PGR 3, and for the first time ever, it allows you to race
motorcycles as well as a ton of cars. Keep an eye out in the streets, as PGR 4
will be the biggest and deepest PGR yet.

The biggest addition to the PGR franchise with
PGR 4 is certainly bikes. The game will offer a ton of licensed motorbikes on
top of its already impressive roster of cars. The bikes handle quite differently
from cars, but they also allow you to perform different tricks in order to earn
kudos, like Wheelies and Endos, adding a brand new dynamic to the kudos system.

Aside from the new career mode that promises to
put the player in the center of the action, the game will feature an arcade mode
reminiscent of the one featured in Project Gotham 2.

Graphically, the game will be a force to be
reckoned with. The E3 demo showcased some amazing rain effects, where the
droplets of water would bead off of the windows of the car as well as cause wet
effects on the body. Weather conditions, like volumetric fog that would
dissipate as you got to higher elevations, were present, as was snow and ice
puddles in the road.

The game will also have some pretty robust online
features, including Gotham on Demand, a new Youtube-like service that allows you
to save races and show them off to your friends online, as well as Team racing,
lobbies and regional championships.

PGR 4 will be a huge step for the series, and
should be one that racing fans will want to check out this fall.

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Previews