Project Gotham Racing 4 (2007)

I don’t care that Project Gotham Racing 4 doesn’t feel like it came from the arcade like the first Project Gotham Racing or that it doesn’t have the same style and personality. I don’t care that it can’t match the level of content in Project Gotham Racing 2. I don’t care that it isn’t as immediate and accessible as Project Gotham Racing 3. I don’t care because Project Gotham Racing 4 is so damn good.

The presentation here is top notch for a racing game of this generation. It’s a good step up from Project Gotham Racing 3 and it is my favourite looking since the first game. The cars and bikes look excellent and it has the realistic and accurate locations you would expect of this series. The menus are cool and they really went an extra step in many places – like how the gauge for speed, gear and rpm in the bottom right is unique to each car, or how the camera moves slightly to accentuate drifts and crashes, or that there are little animations of the bike riders taking a hand or leg off the bike and giving it a bit of a shake before getting it back on. Then there is the immensely impressive weather. There is fog and rain. But not just rain, it can be light or heavy with full on storms with lightning and puddles. They are really good puddles that impact car handling. They didn’t stop there though they did snow as well and it has areas where snow and ice will build up and it functions similar to puddles of water. This weather is also dynamic so it changes throughout races. Flying through a city, in cockpit view during rain or snow is just magic. It is so good you’ll want to slow down and soak it all in. Adding to this is the awesome sounding cars and a great soundtrack. All up it’s one of my favourite racing games to just be in.

The gameplay takes a big step forward from Project Gotham Racing 3 as well. The car handling has changed again. The quickest way to put it is that they took what was in 3 and gave it a solid push towards realism. Obviously it is still nowhere near sim though. It is still in the middle of sim and arcade on the racing game spectrum. The wheel spin, burnouts and drifting is the best it has ever been for the series. It has a great sense of speed and that great feeling of weight. AI of the other cars on track is improved from 3 and they show a bit more aggression. Then there are the bikes which are incredible fun and they aren’t just tacked on but a fully developed part of the game, so much so that they could have easily made their own motorbike game as well. Leaning through corners and then drifting out feels fantastic. You can do massive wheelies, endos and even little stunts that boost kudos. Project Gotham Racing 4 simply has some of the best and most enjoyable car and bike handling ever. It is immediately fun and easy to jump into but still provides a challenge that requires practice and precision.

Thankfully Project Gotham Racing 4 also has a big jump in content from the third game. There are more locations, plenty more cars and the big addition of bikes. It has a fully fleshed out career mode, some new event types and arcade mode returns. The career mode plays out as a season full of events. It is meant to be played multiple times and has satisfying progression. The arcade mode is an excellent, rewarding test of your skills. It was great jumping back and forth between these two modes. It kept things fresh and fun for a very long time. On top of this are the online and local multiplayer options and the time attack and custom match. Project Gotham Racing 4 gives you more customisation options than ever before but it is still just colours/paintjobs and driver changes. They also made the right decision to ditch credits and go back to kudos only. Don’t forget about Geometry Wars in the garage as well. There is more than enough good content here to keep you happy.

Project Gotham Racing 4 is close to standing among the best games of all time. And I don’t mean simply best racing games of all time. I mean it is close to rubbing shoulders with the best of the whole medium. There are just a few things holding it back a bit. First up is the car damage. They gave crashes a nice crunchy sound and glass can shatter but the visual damage is lacking and behind Project Gotham Racing 2. It would be nice to see the cars folding up and denting quite a bit more. I’d also like to see more tyre smoke. Then there is the soundtrack, which is great, but too small and the fictional radio stations are still absent. I know this game has a good amount of cars and bikes but I would have loved to see some more variety of car types. Difficulty is still not quite right. In career normal is too easy and hardcore isn’t what you expect. I wish there were more options. Difficulty in arcade is better but it still has dips and spikes throughout. My only other main issue would be that I sometimes felt like there were too many different events and not enough typical races. There are also some small nitpicks. For example, at some rare times there is slowdown and you can still get a great corner bonus even if you bumped the barrier.

After playing through Project Gotham Racing 4 I now understand why we didn’t get a fifth game. It is because Microsoft didn’t want to see Turn 10 and Playground Games get embarrassed. Okay, seriously though imagine if Bizarre Creations were able to refine and build on what is here, that would have been one hell of a racing game. At least we still have Project Gotham Racing 4 which is one of the greatest racing games of all time and a must own Xbox 360 game, go play it.

9.0/10

Right after Project Gotham Racing 4 Bizarre Creations put out a third person shooter called The Club. It’s an interesting game as it doesn’t follow the cover based trends of the time. Instead it is arcadey experience that focuses on movement, speed and score. I’m not going to tell you it is some amazing hidden gem but it is fun and worth trying. During this time Bizarre Creations was bought by Activision (you can probably immediately guess how this story will end) and the rights to Project Gotham Racing are still sitting with Microsoft doing nothing. The game industry being shit and studios and franchises with long, excellent histories being treated like crap is nothing new unfortunately.

Under Activision Bizarre Creations released two games in 2010, James Bond 007: Blood Stone and Blur. I haven’t played James Bond 007: Blood Stone but because of Bizarre Creations consistency I’m going to order myself a copy. Thanks to me being slack with writing this review I have already played through Blur. It’s different to Project Gotham Racing. It is a lot more arcadey and focuses on completing objectives and driving with violence for ‘fans’ instead of style for kudos. The quickest way of describing it is Mario Kart crossed with Need for Speed. It’s really damn fun and deserved to do better. It shot itself in the foot by releasing in the same month as Split/Second, Modnation Racers and a couple of other little games called Mario Galaxy 2 and Red Dead Redemption. I’m not sure why they didn’t get out the way and then the games media shot the other foot, so the game just fell over at the starting line. Gaming journalism/reviews have been pretty detrimental to the medium for probably nearly 20 years now, not that it was ever perfect. It’s a shame because of what happened next and Blur is a must play for arcade racing game fans.

Sadly after James Bond 007: Blood Stone and Blur Activision shut down Bizarre Creations. It’s really disappointing to see a talented studio with a great record that goes right back to the 80s get closed. It is particularly sad because they were already well into developing Blur 2 as well, hopefully everyone involved was able to land on their feet. At least they left a legacy of great games we can all still enjoy. I have loved playing through the Project Gotham Racing series and Blur. I have added some new titles to my wish list and I want to revisit The Club as well. It’s been a great journey and I can’t wait to keep doing this with more game series.

A million kudos to Bizarre Creations!