Today’s gamers can be pretty hard to impress. We’ve seen it all and played it all, and now we expect every new game to have realistic modeling, well-animated environments, and a finely tuned balance between realism and gameplay. The games that seek to distinguish themselves must do so by finding a new angle to exploit—something that most of us have never imagined being part of a game before.Project Gotham Racing® 2has found that angle: After you play this game, you’ll never think the same way about single-player again. It’s just that groundbreaking.
The Many Faces of Multiplayer There are, of course, certain things that you should expect of any Xbox Live-enabled game, and PGR 2 has them. Head-to-head racing against gamers from around the world? Check. A way to find whether your friends are online and ready to race? Check. Leaderboards? Check, and then some: PGR 2 ranks your kudos achieved against those of other players worldwide, but it also extends the idea by allowing you to specialize. If your dream is to dominate the roads of Barcelona or Venice, PGR 2 allows you to climb those specific leaderboards until you're as famous as the Doge himself. If you find a wrinkle in a certain course that you know will allow you to slide gracefully through turns, pop up on two wheels, or perform other stunts that boost your kudos, go ahead and refine those specialized skills, because those are the things that will make you the king (or queen) of your own little corner of Xbox Live.
That’s all very impressive, but those are just the basics. A truly great game distinguishes itself by exceeding those common expectations. The greatest distinction in PGR 2 can be found not in its exquisite eye to detail or its eye-popping visuals—though its courses have to be seen to be believed. No, its greatest distinction is to be found in how it breaks down the barrier between single and multiplayer and makes both modes more fun.
Xbox Live Comes to You When you start up the game, PGR 2 automatically signs on to Xbox Live and gathers data on the current state of performance among everyone playing the game: Who's the fastest on which courses, and what cars did they drive? Then, when you race in single-player, you're also racing against the world. In the various single-player modes—Kudos World Series, Street Racing, and Time Attack, to name just a few—you’ll be racing against the clock or against computer-controlled opponents. When you select a track, you’ll also see the scoreboard for that course, including the top times and top drivers in that event by which you can rate your own private performance. After you’ve completed a challenge, your time or kudos score is automatically uploaded to Xbox Live, and if you’re in the top 10 for that leaderboard, now the rest of the world will be chasing you.
Want something a bit more dramatic? No problem. Just enter a Ghost Challenge. In this single-player mode, you will be able to download a “ghost” from Xbox Live—translucent images that show a top competitor’s previous performance in one of several events. Some of these ghosts represent all-time best performances, while others are the best within the last week or month, so the challenges will always remain fresh. In these races, you won’t simply be battling against the clock; it will be like you’re out on the road against the best drivers in the world. This is a good way for you to get a taste of multiplayer if you don’t think you’re quite ready for the big-time yet. Hone your skills in the privacy of your own home, and then, when you’re doing well in races against ghosts and your best times and scores are climbing up the leaderboards, you can take your game to Xbox Live.
If you want to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best. PGR 2 lets you answer that challenge in both single and multiplayer, and in doing so it sets a new standard for how future games should design their own modes of play. When you’re racing the roads of PGR 2, you’re Live even when you’re not, and that makes an already good game great.
