It seems when Microsoft went to launch its Xbox 360 it tasked its developers to make games in the most popular genres. Perfect Dark Zero filled the first-person shooter slot. Kameo: Elements of Power covered the action/adventure genre. Project Gotham Racing 3 is covering the ever-popular driving genre. And while it may not break any great conventions of driving games past with the new hardware, PGR3 nonetheless delivers a first-class racing experience for Xbox 360 owners ready to scream down the virtual pavement.

Project Gotham Racing 3 is the third game in the Project Gotham Racing series that had its origins in Metropolis Street Racer for the Sega Dreamcast. The untimely death of that great console left developer Bizarre Creations (who also developed a personal favorite of mine – Fur Fighters) with nowhere to go with a sequel to their solid street racer. But within the year Bizarre Creations had made the jump to the then-new Xbox console, and with a slight name change, Project Gotham Racing proved to be one of the most popular racing franchises on the Xbox.

The centerpiece of the PGR experience has always been the "kudos" point system. Players receive kudos for good racing and not making mistakes. Stringing a series of street maneuvers together without hitting track elements or other cars earned the big kudos. Earning kudos for your driving performance naturally unlocked extra content and kept the game interesting. The kudos system returns in all its glory in PGR3, so the game will feel instantly comfortable to anyone who has played previous PGR games. The system does have a bit of a quirk with the Xbox Live support: kudos earned offline do not transfer to online play and vice versa. I suppose I can see that logic. Earning a bunch of kudos alone and offline and then going into the jungle of Live could give players a bit of a shock and perhaps rank less-skilled players too highly. To paraphrase Han Solo, "Good against AI-controlled cars is one thing. Good against cars driven by the living is another."

PGR glorifies street racing, so the tracks tend to be through cities with lots of turns to keep you on your toes. One place the game did take a major leap forward was in the realism of the cities you’ll race through. Las Vegas, London, New York and Tokyo all look great. If you’ve been to a few of these locals, you’ll be amazed at the accurate landmarks that you can see. Of course if you’re the driver you don’t get to see as much as you might like to. Let a friend drive once in a while to get a virtual tour. All the tracks are challenging and the player can even lay out his own courses in the cities with the Route Creator tool.

PGR3 has lots of racing choices for gamers. Single-player modes include Gotham Career where the player will compete in 23 events around the world. Completing a series of events in career unlocks the next set of events until all are complete. For just a jump-in-and-race game, Playtime allows the player to choose from a wide variety of cars, tracks and opponent skill levels for a quick run around the track. Live is fully supported for multiplayer races with up to eight players at a time. Link play also supports up to eight players if you and your buds prefer to get together face-to-face for your racing. The game even has two-player split screen racing.

One of the more interesting additions to the game is the spectator mode known as Gotham TV. Gotham TV is an Xbox Live mode that allows the player to watch races being run by the world’s best drivers (a great way to pick up some tips) or those people on your Friends list who may be racing at the time. Microsoft claims tens of thousands can watch at once.

From a presentation point of view, PGR3 is incredible. The 75 or so cars are all beautifully detailed and accurately reflect their surroundings while on the track. A total of five racing views allow the player to choose from two third-person views or three inside-the-car views. Before I alluded to the realism of the city map layouts, well the actual details of the visuals that make up the cities are equally amazing. They just look so real. You’ll often be tempted to stop in mid-track and say, "Hey, I stayed at that hotel in Vegas!" The sound also measures up with throaty engine roars, squealing tires and a choice of nine different driving music playlists that range from hip hop to classical. Or if you want your own driving music, rip music from a CD to the hard drive or stream it from a personal audio player through the USB port.

Okay, that is all the niceties of the game. Now we come to the two factors in my book that determine the driving game champions from the also-rans: handling and sense of speed.

In the handling department PGR3 does everything correctly. The cars control smoothly and responsively with the stock Xbox 360 hand controller. Over steering is not a problem and the cars feel like they have the proper weight and reaction to the physics of driving. My sources within MadCatz tell me that when the officially-licensed MC2 steering wheel becomes available in the near future, it will be the definitive way to race with PGR3. I’m really looking forward to that.

The sense of speed (that sensation that comes with moving forward at a fast rate) inherent in real driving has often been the hardest aspect of creating a driving game. Atari first managed it in the arcade game Night Driver with their cyber mile markers zipping by in a blur. To show how far we’ve come, PGR3 does it with an amazingly detailed city zipping by in a blur. The sensation is really unbelievable and will have you gripping white-knuckle to the controller. I think it works so well because they have accurately recreated the visuals we all see when we drive day in and day out and speeded them up to the point where we recognize what we are seeing as surely what it must be like if we added 100 mph to our commute speed. This makes PGR3 one of the most realistic driving games ever.

No, Project Gotham Racing 3 doesn’t have a lot added to the gameplay department beyond what was in the Project Gotham Racing 2 game that came out a scant two years ago for the Xbox, but it did beef up the Live support, pump up the visuals and made the actual sensation of driving that much better. The lack of gameplay innovation in the series keeps it from soaring into the stratosphere, but for shear driving fun, Project Gotham Racing delivers.