Reviews// Project Gotham Racing 3 (Xbox 360)

Both Kudos and credits can be won by competing in races that are split into three basic kinds: timed events, street races and style events. Timed events pit you against the clock which is either counting down to zero or up to a "target time" a pretty academic distinction if you ask us. There is also a split-point times race, which prevents you from coasting through with a very fast car even if you're poor at cornering.

The street races pit you against either five or one opponent, and again the distinction is a fine one for us. A single opponent is never more fun than a handful. There's also an eliminator style race, where the current losing car on each lap is removed from contention.

The style events are possibly the most fun, drift challenge requires you to get a certain amount of Kudos points within a time limit. In the early stages the time limit means you only get a single corner to go at, but as the game progresses the time extends and you can mass points from several curves. But the best race of all, for our money, is the Time-vs-Kudos challenge, where you are set an insanely tight target time for a track, but the more kudos you get as you take the bends, the more the target is extended. You have to work out, on a track-by-track basis whether you need to style it for an extension, which inevitably slows you down, or if you need to floor it for a fast run. The solution is different for each track, and different corners allow more or fewer Kudos points for a given time penalty.

Time-vs-Kudos is great training for making clean laps, and you'll need it. On Easy PGR is fun, but not much of a challenge, on Normal, each opponent is of Schumacher standard, and you'll need to be pulling clean corners to stand a chance.

MSR became Project Gotham when New York's streets were added to those of San Fran, London and Tokyo for you to race around. PGR2 added Edinburgh and Sydney, but kept the NY themed name. PGR3 drops those two new locations, and adds Las Vegas and Germany's Nurbergring - reputedly the world's toughest race-track - in both GP and 'original' flavours.

Racing in familiar city streets is both the reason the series got its "Metropolis" name, and one of its biggest selling points. Although the tracks change, and there are hundreds of different layouts, if you know the streets you're racing on, it actually gives you an advantage. Like learning a track in any racing game - but some of these you may have driven for real. It's rare that you'd get to hoon down the Las Vegas strip at 180mph - deviating only to loop round the Luxor's sphinx-like parking loop - though, every time we've been there it's been one long tail-back.

Previous PGRs have given us the thrill of real city driving, but in a spooky deserted post-apocalyptic version of those cities, devoid of other cars and of bystanders. London looking like the one from the movie 28 Days Later. PGR3 puts the Xbox360's extra grunt to good use with the addition of spectators. It also explains the lack of traffic by decking the streets out, city centre GP style with barriers - making them look like "real" race tracks. While this makes the game more plausible, it actually puts you at arms length from the fabulous city models you're racing round, making them mere backdrops to a traditional circuit-based racing game.