Controlling your car or bike is easily approachable with its straightforward control scheme but allows for a very wide degree of skilled use and eventual mastery. Starting off you will normally be racing in either day or night around relatively easy tracks, but later events will throw rain, fog, and other inclement weather into the mix. One of the highlights of exactly how fine of control and nerves that can be required in some of the later events includes one which puts the player in the cockpit of a 1950’s race car and has them racing around the Nürburgring in the dawn hours of a very snowy day. Rather than such a difficult track and car pairing showing off the flaws in the control setup, instead the controls are as fine and tight as one would expect from a racing wheel setup let alone a gamepad.
The PGR series has always been one that Microsoft has wheeled around to show off the graphical fidelity of their consoles and the latest in the series does not disappoint. The vehicle models are striking in their overall quality and the lighting effects used for different times of day bring the tracks to life. Weather effects are used to great effect with snow, rain, and fog all bringing their own unique visual effects to the table. While other effects such as icy roads casting bright reflections from the road ahead are very well done, the rain effects easily take the cake with droplets not only splattering on the road and forming puddles but also forming droplets on the body of your vehicle that slide along the exterior as you drive.
In another PGR tradition the vehicles and sound effects associated with them sound as great as ever. Driving with a manual transmission can be done completely without the HUD and just by listening to the noises the car makes as it reaches higher and lower RPMs. Motorcycles all sound familiar and yet unique to one another as they zip along the track. The soundtrack of the game isn’t incredibly strong, consisting of a few well known songs and many lesser known ones across every genre from metal to classical, but is full bodied enough to please most musical tastes. In the worst case scenario the game adapts well to the use of custom soundtracks via the dashboard from the player who simply wants to put their own music to use.
Project Gotham Racing 4 is one of the rare racing games that have appeal across the board from simulation racers to those who prefer their racing to be a bit more on the arcade side. Regardless of what camp you fall into the title offers gameplay that easy to grow accustomed to, and in the end is just downright entertaining.
