My First Speed Demon

Hey kid, want 85 grand? That's how many credits you start off with in Project Gotham Racing 3 Career Mode, and you might be surprised just how much car you can get for those kinds of credits. But for the detail oriented racer, your first concern may not necessarily be "how much" but "how fast is it?" When picking your first PGR 3 ride, you can make your career more successful by checking out your car's primary attributes—and in this case, I don't mean the paint job.

An in-car view.

Sometimes You Have to Make a Choice
Project Gotham Racing 3 is a flawless hybrid of realism and arcade style—you won't be taking your car into the shop to adjust your tire pressure, but you will get a fully-enabled in-game camera complete with fine focus features and other realistic goodies that let you show off your garage, cars, and trophies with style. So whatever you buy first, make sure you like its looks. When you start playing with the camera, it's hard to stop, and you'll want to put your coolest shots on your Xbox 360™ memory unit to share with your pals.

There's fast, and there's eye-watering
warp-speed world-blurring fast.

You also want to consider credits. Eventually you will win plenty of credits in races, tournaments, and other events, but early in the game the difference between a 50,000-credit car and one that will eat up all of your 85 large credits can be a big one.

Your Lamborghini is waiting.

What Makes a Car a Project Gotham Car
Every one of the turbo-charged supercars of PGR 3 has its power and handling broken down into four primary statistics, each one with a rank going up to a possible ten points.

• Acceleration: Yes, all the cars in PGR 3 are f-a-s-t FAST—but there's fast, and there's eye-watering warp-speed world-blurring fast. Your acceleration affects not just your overall top speed but also your ability to catch up and pass opponents, critical in Overtake Challenges. Acceleration interacts with all three of the other stats in pretty much the same way—there's no need for a drift or brake attribute when there's no speed!
• Grip: How well do your tires hold the road? Novice racers want to look for cars with plenty of grip to avoid slamming into walls on the first turn. Grip interacts with braking, obviously, and is also important if you're the kind of racer who uses manual gear-shifting more than brakes on touch curves.
• Drifting:You know you're going to do it—and that it's one of the best ways to score Kudos quickly. It's also an excellent method of stringing combos together. If your car's got good drift, you can expect to do well in the style department.
• Braking: Brakes can help or hinder, depending on the corner and what your race opponents are up to. A light touch of the brake on a corner can begin a nice long drift without costing you much time, and if you're an automatic-transmission-only type, A) what, are you crazy? And B) braking is going to be critical for you, since you can rely on gear compression.

Show off your ride with pro-style photos.

Speedy's Choice
Will you go with the more challenging Corvette or stick with the novice level Honda concept car? Ferrari or Lotus? These are the kinds of choices it's easy to live with. Make an educated choice and get racing!

Article by Danny Chihdo