PGR3 review

It says something about the human condition that the manufacturers of washing machines made the dials on the front click when they were moved, just because people preferred them that way. It says something about me that I've yet to find a more satisfying feeling in any racing game than, when pulling off an immense powerslide in PGR3, you hear the little Kudos meter in the top left of the screen clicking away, quantifying your awesome trick, affirming by the small chime at the end that yes, that was an incredible drift.

The encouragement of stylish driving has always been at the heart of the PGR series, with the Kudos meter awarding you points based on how stylishly you complete its many challenges, creating a very different focus to the game. In PGR3 the most formidable opponent you will face is yourself. You'll curse yourself for each corner you miss. You'll swear when you hit the wall, trying to pull the biggest slide possible. By comparison you probably won't care if you get overtaken by an AI racer, regarding it as a minor inconvenience.

The bulk of PGR3 lies in its solo career mode where, as previously mentioned, you race your way through a series of events, typically with 3 challenges per event, to get a shiny cup. What makes PGR unique is that these challenges are very rarely straight out races. You'll be faced with challenges asking you to overtake 5 people in a minute, you might have to complete a long course in 20 seconds, made possible by every stylish move you make stopping the clock. The variety of challenges is huge and this helps to keep the game fresh, despite the fairly limited track variations.

Apart from the test track every track in the game is set in one of three cities- London, NY and Tokyo and the big gimmick of PGR3 is that the whole city is rendered in the game, so in theory there is a limitless combination of tracks. This does, however fall down in practice with most of the tracks included by default (you can make your own in a track editor) looking, and behaving, exactly the same- 90^o corners, long straights, the occasional view of a city landmark. Once you've mastered driving on one of PGR3s tracks you've pretty much mastered them all, it'd have been great if the developers had included some real tracks to race on to give the game more longevity.

While the tracks leave a little to be desired the cars in PGR3 certainly do not. You're given a supercar right from the very start of the game, in contrast to games like Gran Turismo where you're pootling about in a hatchback at 30mph for the first few hours. It says something about the selection of cars in the game that there is a "walk around garage" option, allowing you to drink in every small detail on the lovingly modelled cars.

Obviously such a large collection of cars and tracks is useless if the games driving physics aren't sound and, for the most part they are. PGR3 certainly isn't a serious racing simulator in the way that titles like Forza are- drifting is almost insultingly easy and it's very rare that you won't be in total control of your car, no matter how ridiculously fast you're going.

In fact, difficulty seems to be a bit of a problem in PGR3- opponents in every challenge are selected according to what car you have so there is absolutely no incentive to use anything than the cheapest car, which is also the easiest to drive. You can pick a difficulty at the beginning of each challenge but rather than making the races harder it simply sets higher targets, for example on "professional" you have to come first in every race, compared to third on "medium" difficulty. It's an interesting idea but the races are so easy that getting first place really is no hassle at all. Some of the non-race events are more challenging, the timed events in particular coming down to the last 10 seconds nearly every time but nothing beats the thrill of a tough race and it's a pity that PGR3 never quite manages to deliver this thrill.

Difficulty issues can be rectified by taking part in the Xbox Live online mode included, but this requires Xbox Live gold and in my experience the XBL community are awful racers, preferring to ram you off the track than have a proper race, and swearing at you endlessly if you mess up and hit them.

With PGR4 now in the shops you can pick up PGR3 for less than a tenner and for that much it's very definitely worth it. Its great fun to play with friends, one challenge each, but once you've experienced all the challenge types and bought all the cars (which will take less time than you think) PGR quickly loses its appeal, without a decent online community and with too little challenge in its offline modes

79%