VIVE LE FRANCE! Paris Booster Pack Now Available for Project Gotham Racing 2

Microsoft Game Studios has announced the arrival of new downloadable content for the popular Xbox racing title, Project Gotham Racing® 2 (PGR 2). The PGR 2 Paris Booster Pack includes eight cars to race on seven new tracks in the beautiful "City of Lights." Gamers can now download the PGR 2 Paris Booster Pack via Xbox Live for $6.99.

Say bon jour to the new Paris track!

The PGR 2 Paris Booster Pack will have gamers racing through the streets of Paris in some of the hottest cars around. Here’s the complete list of new vehicles:

TVR Cerbera Speed 12 (in British Racing Green)
BMW M3 CSL
BMW 645Ci
Chevrolet Corvette C6
Ferrari 250 TR
Ferrari 288 GTO
Ferrari 365 GTS 4
Porsche 356 A Carrera Speedster

Paris’ historic monuments and major attractions, like the Eiffel Tower and the L’Arc de Triomphe, are displayed in incredible detail. For those of you keeping score at home, here are the names of the new courses (although these names will be much more meaningful after you’ve driven them):

Le Circuit Complet
Les Deux Ponts
Elysees Challenge
Les Monuments Celebres
L’Arc de Triomphe
Avenue D’Ilena
Circuit Interieur

In this article, I’ll focus on just one of the new layouts: Circuit Interieur. It’s a relatively short track (about one mile in length), but it’s a total high-speed blast to drive. Imagine a simple little U.S.-style stock car track (all the turns are lefties) plopped down, smack in the middle of super-sophisticated Paris. That’s the essence of Circuit Interieur. It emphasizes speed, with three straight-aways interrupted by three turns of varying sharpness.

The key to posting fast lap times is getting through the corners cleanly. Driving the powerful and fast Speed 12, I was able to get around Circuit Interieur in just under 31 seconds. But, I’m much prouder of the lap I turned in the Subaru Impreza 22B—36.232 seconds—because I didn’t bang it off the walls, like I did with the Speed 12.

Great triumph stop: beneath L’Arc de Triomphe.

The final turn, which comes at the end of the longest straightaway, is the hardest to negotiate. To get through it, you have to slow down to a crawl, which almost completely kills your momentum. (Unless you’d rather use the guardrail to turn the car, as I did to complete my fastest lap around the circuit in the Speed 12. Sure, it was a good time, but I wasted an opportunity to score Kudos for style.)