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Project Gotham Racing Preview
Mark Simons
00/12/0000
Buckle up and get comfortable for the ride of your life.
Project Gotham Racing is essentially Metropolis Street Racer for Xbox, this is not a bad thing, in fact, this is a very good thing. MSR was one of the best games released on the Dreamcast yet sadly due to the timing of its release it did not reach the audience it deserved. Xbox could give Bizarre Creations another chance to make an impact on a new console, just like they did on the PlayStation with their Formula One game.
For those of you who donât know, MSR was innovative because it did not place all of its emphasis on coming first, you needed style as well. The Kudos system gave you points for pulling of impressive powerslides and issued bonuses for not hitting cars or walls. Coupled with the mission structure you had a rather innovative game, however this is not the place for espousing the qualities of MSR, for that take a look at our review. What Gotham does is build on the foundations laid by MSR, the kudos system has been refined, now you see your score as you pull of tricks and it is possible to string combos together. You get bonuses for slaloming through cones or going on two wheels around corners, this is very cool.
What is nice is that Bizarre Creations are not simply porting the tracks and cars from MSR to Xbox, rather they are being optimised and re-done especially for the console. The detail on the cars is around 16,000 polygons per car, MSR had around 1,500 maximum and Gran Turismo 3 has around 5,000. Oh and each car features true environmental mapping which looks very nice indeed, very nice as the courses they reflect are simply stunning. The already impressive texture work for London, Tokyo and San Francisco has been improved upon and the lighting abilities of Xbox are being used to give a real headlight effect that lights up the levels properly. There are going to be many small little details as well, for instance, in New York which is actually an entire new city especially for Project Gotham there is smoke which rises up from the manhole covers and as your car drives through you see the smoke deform and flow around your car. Impressive, yes, gratuitous, yes, would we like to see more like that, of course.
The single most impressive thing about the cars though is the fact that they have full, total damage capabilities. Yes indeed, and whatâs more the Microsoft licensing department has been working overtime, only the best cars will be in this game. Ferrari, Porsche, BMW and TVR feature, and thatâs just the beginning, and remember, you can write them all off! The damage effects are amazingly well done and show that it is long overdue for this type of game; finally car manufacturers have allowed the developers to do what they really wanted. If you slide along a wall at speed you are probably going to seriously scratch the side of your car and take out the wing mirror. More serious impacts and you will see the destruction increase, and we assume that you can completely total your car. Whilst obviously this will ruin your Kudos we have to wonder how Bizarre Creations will work damage into the structure of the game, will your car miraculously repair it or will you have to fork out for it. Oh, and one idea, there must be a special event whereby you get Kudos for the most spectacular crash, go on Bizarre Creations, you know you want to.
The tracks themselves are not being lifted directly from MSR, instead Bizarre Creations are listening to the criticisms levelled at the title, mainly that there were too many 90 degree bends and the like. For Project Gotham the courses will be much more, well, course like with smooth curves and more technical sections rather than a whole lot of right angle turns. This should make the game more appealing to those spoon-fed on the race course delights of the Gran Turismo series.
One of the best parts of MSR was the music and the radio system that was used whereby you would have a DJ announcing songs and making announcements as well as adverts. This time around there will be licensed radio stations from the cities that the game is set in and licensed songs. However get your own CDs and you can rip them to MP3 and put them on the Xboxâs hard drive, thus letting you listen to your own music as you race.
