Project Gotham Racing 3 [X360]

Easily one of the most anticipated of the Xbox 360 launch titles, does Project Gotham Racing 3 deliver on its next-gen promises? If you're just interested in the visuals, it'll blow you away; and while the gameplay is a little more familiar, it still runs a great race. Whether you're playing online and off, Project Gotham 3 will amaze.

Tokyo, Las Vegas, New York, and London play host to PGR3's courses, and frankly, they're astounding. Take a spin down the Las Vegas strip, and you'll likely smack into the barriers while you're gawping at the sights. The detail and realism of PGR3's courses genuinely break new ground, and with an HDTV, there is no better way to show off your shiny new 360's graphical capability. Sure, The Getaway or San Andreas might have cities you can tool around at will, but compared to this, its visual quality belongs to a generation that's long gone.

Want more? Check out the way the brightness and contrast shift as you exit a tunnel section, simulating the sudden dazzling flood of light. Or the reflections on the car - yes, they're real, and not pre-generated fakes. Watch the crowd as they cheer you on or snap pictures. Take a walk round your garage to see the cars up close (you don't really get much of a chance to do this as you flash past them mid-race) and you'll get a taste for the minute detail Bizarre Creations has replicated.

Ironically, the best way to play the game is probably the way that shows you the least of these graphical wonders. Project Gotham 3's in-car view is a real step forward for the series, modeling the vehicle interior all the way down to the gauges and dashboard detail. By flicking the right thumbstick to one side or the other, you can glance out of a side window to scope out passing traffic. It feels just right -- right enough to tempt devout third-person Gotham players into the driver's seat. If you're wondering what the biggest gameplay improvement in PGR3 is... well, it's right here.

And the second biggest gameplay change is that the slower, more everyday cars are all gone. Whereas in previous PGRs you had to earn the exotic hardware by working your way through ranks of lesser cars, here you can grab a Ferrari as your second purchase. While all these expensive vehicles are very nice, the game's sense of progression does lose something when you can pretty much set yourself up with your dream car right off the bat.

It's more than just the progression that's affected, though -- as anyone who took a Mini round the Nurburgring will testify, the smaller cars were a lot of fun to drive. Still, if something had to go, it's probably for the best that it was the Ford Focus and not the Koenigsegg.