Project Gotham Racing

The Good
The reward system, based on giving Kudo points for driving well, is a nice idea and made me at least try it some more. Also, the game's loading times are fast (but you can expect that from a PC-like machine).

The Bad
Well, it was the first Xbox game I ever played - we got a demo Xbox for our store, but Microsoft gave us only one game so I can't compare. But what I know for sure is that this Project Gotham Racing is not the "eXPerience" I had expected. It is not bad, but before the background that the console costs about $500 here and a game sells at $60, it better had been really good.

The graphics... yes, I had a console called Dreamcast which could deliver the same graphics - and it was much cheaper :) When I saw on MobyGames that the same team who did PGR was responsible for MSR (on Dreamcast) too, this explained much to me :) I mean, the graphics are okay, but not for a $500 machine with high-end graphic custom chips. The controls are a bit soft, the car is not easy to steer through the really narrow curves. When I speak about curves - most of the tracks are too dark so that you can't see the curves before you crash in the wall that surrounds the track. In split screen mode, this gets worse because you just see half of the screen.

The Bottom Line
As mentioned, I played this game on a demo console in our store. This demo console is there to convince buyers (and sales personnel like me) to buy this magic box. They complain anyway (console too big, too loud, too expensive...) but when showing them this game, it's simply impossible to sell them a Xbox. I ain't conviced either. Dreamcast owners can laugh at this and get MSR cheap :)