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Thursday 1 January 2004

Best Racing Game Evah [slim]

MSR was a fucking good racer, with two problems... Firstly it had a progression system that was innovative yet fatally fucked up. Second it was released on the Dreamcast, which no fucker bought. Thank shit that wasn't the last of it though, the bizzarely named Project Gotham on the Xbox which turned out to be MSR 1.5. The faults had been fixed, the graphics were beefed and it was released on a platform which people actually owned. Top. In fact it was so top, that when Project Gotham 2 came out, I couldn't be fucked to buy it. I mean, what on earth could make it better? But one weak moment in Tescos later, and I'm hooked. This is the best racing game ever.

What makes PGR2 the best racing game ever? It's made about the same leap in refinement from MSR to the first xbox game. Big changes are the removal of the 'betting' on the results to gain more Kudos points, instead you have stepped challenges. Thats cool, often you'd waste time judging the difficulty of a challenge before placing a reasonable bet. They've also added to what makes you earn the Kudos points, not only do you get them for driving like a nutter, you now also get them for driving like a racing driver, with points for following the correct racing line, which is is now subtly marked with skiddies on the track. The penalties aren't as cuntish as they were either, if you crash in the middle of a combo, you lose the last few additions instead of the whole combo. The style challenges have gone, replaced with cone challenges which allow you to get good medals without pissing around, although the top points still require a complete drifty combo nutter lap. They've also added a fuckload of courses, there's now loads of cities instead of just three and a shitload of new cars, woot! The result is a slightly easier, more forgiving game, but it's still bastard hard to unlock the new highest level platinum medals for the challenges.

All of that would only make it a very good racing game. What makes it the best is the cunning way Bizzare have weaved the online Live stuff into every part of the game. It's got the bit you'd expect, you can race other people and call them wankers over xbox live when they cut you up. But online is everwhere else too! Complete a challenge, an arcade race or a time trial, and you see the worldwide scoreboard for that section, it also uploads your score to Live so people can laugh at your puny attempt. Wonder how the fuck that guy could get so many points in a puny Cooper S? You can download his ghost car, and watch the fucker do it! Ooooh, he got a million points for drifting then passed on the last bend, aaaaah! The whole thing feels more like an mmo game than a racer, the joy of redoing a challenge and jumping from a worldwide rank of forty thousand and something into the top five thousand pushes you to get better. You get recorded kudos on Live too, kind of like xp in an online RPG, your ranks displayed. You use that rank to put yourself against players of a similar skill, so you know your going to get a good race. There's a slight downer in that if you haven't unlocked the fannytastic cars, you are going to get hammered online, but that does give you a good reason to unlock the fanny cars too. Besides, you can always host a game and lock the car selection to something you do have for a far race.

So, an utterly superb single player game, a top and easy to use online feature, and a brilliantly integrated online scoring and ranking system. Best racer ever. Who wants some?

15 comments:

  1. Yeah it's pretty good. I haven't been arsed with live so I've only tried the single player. If racing's your bag then try Need For Speed Underground as well. Only single player, but a better single player game than Gotham. It basically nicks all the best ideas from Gotham, Burnout & Midnight Club. Very pretty, but frame rates can suffer on occaision. The PC version seems much smoother in this respect, and has on line play too. (But a crap server browser & the need to open a few ports on your firewall).

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  2. Spiny, you're on crack if you think NFS underground is better than Project Gotham, even single player.

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  3. Spiny's right, NfSU is betterer than gotham 1 in SP, but burnout 2 is still the king of street racing.

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  4. If I was to get one xbox racer, which would it be?

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  5. If you want multiplayer: Project Gotham 2. I can't believe these mongs rate Need for Speed over it. Tossers, the lot of em!

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  6. need for speed has preteen lights under the cars. the consumer group is nerd boys who cant get laid.nerd boys who cant get laid cant afford ferraris, but they can fit blue lights under dads toyota camry. its all about image, to appeal to your audience!

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  7. You *know* lime green with pink vynil & neon is the way to go...

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  8. Aren't the mongs saying nfsu is better than pgr1 rather than pgr2, to be fair that should be true since pgr1 has been out for ages.

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  9. Yep, Slims right, if you want multi player PGR2 is the way to go, NFSU is sp only. I still contend that NSFU has the better single player, tho having said that I still have both :)

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  10. It appears I was being too generous, you are a complete mong if you think nfsu is better for sp than pgr2

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  11. He's utterly fucked in the head, for sure.

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  12. can i play some racing games

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  13. This experiment in social interaction with the general public is going a long way to convincing me of what I had long suspected - that members of the greater populace are nothing but a gaggle of slackjawed gawkers, content to spout bat-brained blarney, flim-flam and hoo-haa across the interweb!
    End this now! For the sake of common sense.

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  14. Sigh. What will it take to lose public comments...

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