Firstly, Project Gotham Racing 2 (I will abbreviate it to PGR2, and Gran Turismo 4 etc to GT4) is an arcade racing game. Nothing overly realistic about this play games, other than the rather plush graphics which make the most of the Xbox’s powerful hardware. This is all a good thing though in my opinion, as arcade racers are FUN – this is oddly enough of great importance to me in a video game! The cars all handle differently, some are heavy, some light, so all have wildly different characteristics, some brake better, some accelerate in the lower rev end, some in the top of the range…..so all these little things make the difference from track to track. You don’t (and can’t) play around with the cars, you can’t tweak them at all unlike in GT4….and this is fine by me, as GT4 gets a little too anal about these things and it has gotten tiresome now. I just want to get in my car, and throw it around a track.
Now….this leads me on to the tracks and the cars. The cars in this are mainly all expensive, luxury motors. Where as in GT4 it has a mixture of super cars, down to the average car us normal folk may drive…..PGR2 ranges from great cars to ultimate supercars. Where PGR2 destroys GT4 is the inclusion of brands such as FERRARI and PORSCHE. Oh yes, we can now drive the best cars ever made in the Ferrari F40, Enzo and the Porsche 959 and Carrera GT!! There are about 200+ cars in the game overall, so not as many as the GT series, but most of these cars in PGR2 are fabulous. The tracks in the game span the globe, from Australia, to the UK, to Japan and Sweden. They are well designed and some cars are far easier to drive on some tracks than others.
The game is focused on having fun. It feels right, and is always a pleasure to drive….in GT4, there were far too many occasions where I just wanted to get a race out of the way so I could get extra money to buy an exhaust so my car would be 2% better! This just doesn’t happen in PGR2, its always a great pleasure to drive the cars. You earn extra money/credits in this game by driving well and in style – Kudos points are awarded for sweet overtaking moves, and not crashing!
Graphically, this is on par with GT4….although Sony’s game does have an edge in many errors, with photorealistic backdrops, PGR2 opts for more 3D backgrounds, so in many ways is a superior technical achievement (although this is balanced by the Xbox being more powerful hardware against the PS2). Another bonus for PGR2 is that you CAN damage your car! You can batter your Ferrari F40 to pieces, where as in GT4 – still no damage allowed to the manufacturers precious cars.
To sum up, this game is classic arcade racing at its finest. There is online free games available against your Xbox Live rivals, you can also battle it out split screen or over LAN. Another great feature is that you can add your own music to the Xbox hard drive and play your own songs whilst driving. Better than GT4? I prefer PGR2, but its ultimately down to preference….and look at that Ferrari F40 below!!