Project Gotham Racing 3

If you're a racing fan, this is a must-have game for your XBox 360. If you're just looking to see how good the graphics are on the XBox 360, at lesat rent this game. It's quite impressive!!

You choose from a number of real cars. There are Ferraris, Jaguars, Aston Martins, Lamborghinis, McLarens and much more. The cars look AMAZINGLY good with full detail, and you can choose the color as well.

You race your car through a number of circuits around some quite recognizeable towns. You end up in London, Las Vegas, New York City, Tokyo and Nurburgring. Each location is full of detail. When you drive down the river Thames in London you pass Big Ben. Vegas has gorgeous hotels that I remember from my visits there.

Doing fun stunts earns you Kudos points, so not only are you aiming to win your races to earn cash, but you also want to rack up Kudos points. That makes even the easier races fun, as you do spins, slides and much more.

The world you're in is quite interactive. The people watching the race take flash pictures as you drive past - but if you crash into a fence near them, they all cringe. There are clouds floating by overhead. Mostly, though, there are other racers on the track trying to get by you and steal the lead.

We found the controls to be very intuitive, and the cars handled quite nicely. Note that this is a GAME racing system - i.e. it's not pure realistic. If you smash into a wall at 100mph, your car does not explode into a thousand shards of metal. You simply spin off gently and keep going. That being said, most gamers really don't want a "realistic" racing game. They want a fun one, and this game delivers across the board.

I have to admit that for me, half the fun in this game is the gorgeous landscapes. In Vegas, you drive past the Excalibur and Treasure Island, and the details are picture-perfect. New York, New York is by the track in quite amazing clarity.

I also love the sound in this game - because the soundtrack options are simply awesome. You can choose from a number of soundtracks, from classical to alternative to J-Pop and more. You can even stream in music from your iPod or other MP3 player!

I suppose if you hate racing games, you probably will find this game to be boring. You're just racing cars around in circles with pretty scenery and great sound. But you'd have to be in the minority to not enjoy this game. The cars are amazing. The graphics are amazing. The sound is amazing. Because of the multiplayer options, including up to 8 simultanous live players online, you could play this game for eternity and still find people to challenge you.

If you want even MORE of a challenge, you can even create your own custom route through their maps! You can design your very own custom lap system and challenge others to play on it. Talk about variety!

Highly, highly recommended!

My girlfriend was against me getting an Xbox 360 until she played this game. There's something about this game that really makes it feel as if you're really driving. The attention to detail is amazing. This is the game I put in my Xbox 360 to play when company comes over and they say "oh, you have the new Xbox...". It is totally fun and addicting. My girlfriend is stuck playing the career mode and I actually come home to see her playing it.

This is a funn game.

Project Gotham Racing 3 was the first game I got for my 360. In fact, I got a copy for Christmas before I even had a 360! Let me start by saying this, PGR3 is a great game, if you are looking for a racing game to add to your 360 collection, get PGR3.

The game plays like a forgiving racing simulator. It's not quite as realistic as Forza, but it's defiantly not as "arcade" as Burnout or Need for Speed. It took me about half an hour to get used to the controls, and about an hour or two to get good. The difficulty settings are very well implemented. Before each event, you chose the difficulty setting you want to race at. The first time I played through the game, I did almost everything on the medium (silver) difficulty. I completed all the events in about 12 hours without too much difficulty. I am currently working though it on the hard (gold) setting, and I am about a third of the way through.

The graphics are very good, but flawed in one way; there are a lot of "jaggies." On my HDTV, there is a very thin black jagged line around each car, which is a little distracting sometimes. However, if you don't have an HDTV, then you have nothing to worry about. On my regular TV the game looks like a really good original xbox game, and there are no jaggies.

The sound in PGR3 is amazing. There are five different views that you can drive in, and the sound of the car engine changes accordingly. When you race using the "dash view" (from inside the drivers seat), the engine sound is slightly muffled and just as it would in the real world. When your racing using the "on car" views (where you don't see any part of your car), the engine is noticeably louder and clearer. Each car has its own distinct sound, which is very impressive, and shows the length that the developers went to make a great game.

PGR3 also has a very good soundtrack. There are around eight different genera's of music including rock, hip-hop, classical, techno, etc. If you can't find something you like on the game's soundtrack, or you just feel like racing to your own music, you can easily play songs off of the hard drive or even you iPod.

The main point of any racing game is the cars. In PGR3, there are about 80 cars. They represent a cross section of automobiles. They have classic cars, racing cars, dream cars, concept cars, they have everything. The cars are grouped into classes based on performance. The only thing I would have changed about the cars would be adding a specific "racing class" and adding more racing cars.

The long term value in any "next-gen" game is its online multiplayer, and PGR3 has an amazing multiplayer. When you race online, you race against up to 8 other people in fun, lag free races. It's similar to Halo 2's matchmaking, where the developer's group races (game types) together and you choose what kind of event you want to race in. The people are very respectable, and much less annoying than those who play many other games. I have only run into a few annoying kids, and usually, the rest of the racers warn each other about disruptive players (example: "Hey, the kid in the blue Ferrari is a jackass, watch out for him.").

All in all, PGR3 is a great game, if you love racing games, than you will love Project Gotham Racing 3. Even if you are just looking for a racing game to round out your 360 collection, look no further than PGR3.

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