Project Gotham Racing 4: Hot 'Racification' Details

Bizarre Creations has released some teaser tidbits on all of its forthcoming games prior to Min-E3 next week, including a new screen (pictured) and new info on Project Gotham Racing 4, one of SPOnG’s most anticipated driving games of 2007.

SPOnG is also told that the company is about to release a major announcement about the game at E3. If this is not the fact that there will be fully ride-able motorbikes in Project Gotham Racing 4 then SPOnG will eat one of our freshly printed SPOnG t-shirts in front of photographers on Santa Monica Pier next week.

Bizarre’s wonderfully-named 'racification' team is tasked with adding race furniture to all the cities, including turn markers, crowd stands, race teams and vehicles, ambient traffic, animated billboards and more. One of the hottest new features in PGR4 is that players will notice that crowd members will be waving their flag and trackside signs displaying how many Kudos points they have earned. The beauty, you see, is in the detail.

The new Project Gotham Racing 4 screen you see here shows off one of the game's new cities, with Bizarre explaining: “See the yellow and black Armco barrier? Well in PGR3 this would have been grey and, well, dull. In PGR4 the barriers are different colours based on the city, they have logos and slogans painted on them, and you'll even trade paint with the barriers if you scrape up against them. Of course this paint trading stays for the duration of the race, so by the end of three laps you should see some pretty colourful barriers!”

“All of this should help remove that "racing through a tunnel" feeling that sometimes occurred in PGR3. As you know, all of the PGR3 locations are making a comeback in PGR4 so our guys have gone back and "racified" these old cities as well. Now they too benefit from this new found awesomeness.”

More on Project Gotham Racing 4’s new features, cars and *cough* motorbikes next week.