When Project Gotham Racing was released on the Xbox six years ago, it offered deep, fast-paced arcade racing that dabbled just enough in the world of the simulation to keep racing fanatics entertained for months on end. PGR2 offered the same but with more cars and online play, then PGR3, the series' debut on Xbox 360, built on that foundation with a fleshed out online system including true skill ranking and Gotham TV. Six years minus a month down the road and Project Gotham Racing 4 continues this tradition of building and improving on a system that already works, but this time around has left out much of the polish that makes PGR what it is.

A good place to start with PGR4 is with its gameplay. For those who are new to the franchise, PGR4, just like all the other PGRs, offers fast-paced arcade racing that focuses on style as much as it does speed. You will often find yourself excessively speeding down a straight when approaching a difficult corner and having the question of speed or style pop into your head. If you choose speed then you can slow down, hit the inside corner of the turn before the apex and accelerate out of the turn - slow in, fast out. If you choose style, which will earn you lots of Kudos points, you will most likely end up ignoring the slowing down part and hitting the E-brake at the last second, sliding around the entire turn - it might not be faster but it's sure worth more in terms of style. The game executes this racing combination so well that it tricks you into thinking that you're playing a simulation - that is until you realize that you just took a corner at 100km/hour. In essence PGR uses a simulation engine but has exaggerated physics to keep the game in arcade territory, although this is by no means a bad thing, as the racing in PGR4 is fun and addictive.

This hybrid simulation/arcade style blends in very well with the new dynamic weather system, which adds rain, snow, ice, fog or sunshine to all of your competitions. Depending on your racing style, this can be either advantageous or detrimental to your races. If you're a competitor at heart and you are always going for your best time then sunshine is your friend and ice will quickly become the bane of your existence; slow in, fast out becomes much more difficult when your car decides not to slow down on the ice. Likewise, if your prefer style over speed then ice and rain can help you rack up all the Kudos points you want, amplifying that last second E-brake turn all the more. Either way, the weather system adds to the gameplay and changes how you might barrel through your race.

On that note, it's very important to explain the new Career mode, which provides year round racing seasons with annual tournaments, reasons to hate Quebec in the winter and access to cars that you can't buy with kudos. The new calendar system adds extra depth, but isn't without its faults. The inability to quickly replay tournaments is a big turn off; once a tournament is lost, you have to wait until you finish a Gotham racing season before you can come back to it, eating up hours of gameplay. Traditional PGR fans may find the new mode confusing and annoying, as it differs greatly from its predecessors. It takes some time to get used to, but once you get the hang of it you'll find that it can actually be quite satisfying to earn new cars and watch yourself rank up inside a fictional leaderboard.

There is still plenty to do outside of the new Career mode though, and those not interested in it will most likely see themselves jumping into the Arcade mode, which Gotham has traditionally defined itself with, yet even this seems to be a little scaled down from previous iterations, almost like Bizarre tried to create two mediocre modes instead of one great one. With the arcade mode you find yourself racing in a variety of traditional Gotham modes with different classes of cars, some of which are easily obtainable, leaving little motivation to achieve more.

The PGR achievements in the game also leave little incentive; if you want to upgrade all your arcade medals to platinum then be prepared to get a measly ten gamerscore for all your hard work, compared to PGR3 where you were rewarded with 100 gamerscore for all platinums in arcade. Through their misguided gamerscore allocations, Bizarre have created puzzle achievements that force you to solve a riddle by playing the game in a very specific way (I can't explain more without spoiling it) in order to get the achievement. I found this very gratifying however and I wish that the game offered more than just three of these.

All in all, even though the gameplay modes appear to be rushed, they still offer the same great PGR racing, with new challenges to test your driving abilities, new cities to speed through and the opportunity to buy cars in packages, which wasn't very appealing at first but then started to grow on me, as it allows you to get more vehicles faster. My only complaint is that the game offers too few packages and players may find themselves owning all of the cars too soon, which leaves little incentive to earn kudos - it seems to be a case of instant gratification over longevity.

You cannot talk about PGR4's gameplay without mentioning the addition of motorcycles. While I am admittedly not a fan of bike racing, I really like the direction Bizarre has taken the franchise by making it an all-round racer. However, the bike racing generally gives off the same feeling of the Career and Arcade mode, namely a lack of polish. Racing a motorcycle just doesn't feel the same as racing a car - you can wheelie your way around the corner for style or go slow in and fast out for speed, but either way it gives off a much slower pace than the rest of the game. When you're E-braking your super car around a tight corner at the last minute, you're holding your breath, but this is hardly the case when you're racing with the motorcycles; your corners and slides are generally too slow to create that breathtaking reaction. When you without a doubt crash your motorcycle, the game has to magically place your bike in the middle of the track again, forcing you to accelerate from zero to get back up to racing speed, killing the pace of the game. This can be in contrast to when you crash your car, bounce off the wall and continue at a slower but still reasonably fast pace. The pacing does not necessarily make motorcycles a failure though - it still has the same great racing mechanics that the rest of the game has and adds a lot of depth to the gameplay. Racing a motorcycle is completely different than racing a car and if you think otherwise then you will quickly find out the hard way. They may appear not to be as useful as their four wheel counterparts, but once you master the motorcycle you can easily dominate online in both speed and kudos, or you can go back to dominate arcade mode and get that double platinum achievement for a grand whopping total of five gamer points. Bizarre have shown they can add new features to the game without wreaking havoc on it, so as long as they stay away from the introduction of nitrous oxide, I think fans can rest comfortably knowing that Bizarre can mess around with the winning formula without crashing the franchise. What's next? Maybe Rally?

Online gaming is something that the series has always excelled in and it continues to do so with PGR4. You will find hours upon hours of extra gameplay in the online portion; in my case it has been hundreds of hours of extra gameplay. When playing online you can choose different events to race against other players. What I really enjoyed was the option to play a three-event tournament against different online opponents. This mini-tournament of sorts does not only include street races, but hot laps and speed challenges among others. The Xbox Live leaderboards in Gotham also surpass all of my expectations - the True Skill ranking system updates fast and accurately and after each race you can check your ranking among other players instantly in-game or even via PGR4's website, http://pgrnations.com/.

The graphics in PGR4 are as beautiful as ever; though you may be racing too fast to notice, when you do happen to perhaps crash, you will be able to spot that the cities are lush with detail. If you are lucky enough to have traveled to the places in the game such as Quebec, London, Shanghai, Macau, Las Vegas, St. Petersburg and New York, you will soon realize that these places are designed specifically to recreate each city with amazing detail and accuracy. The car models are also as detailed as ever, showing beautiful reflections and extraordinarily realistic dashboards. The only complaint that I have for the graphics of PGR4 is that there still a presence of jaggies; though this detracts little from the beauty of the game, it is still worth mentioning because it easily catches your eye. Other than this little flaw, PGR4 runs at a steady framrate that only rarely dips.

Yet again Bizarre needs to be applauded for their wonderful use of sound. Yes, a racing game of this prestige is assumed to have quality realistic sounds effects emanating from the cars, which is does. But what I am most impressed about is the soundtrack; as with its predecessors, Gotham delivers an extremely large source of licensed music that will please any gamer. It has soft rock, hard rock, alternative, hip hop, techno, classical and foreign music. I would be seriously surprised if anyone did not find at least a handful of songs they liked. This makes the racing all so much more enjoyable and upbeat, especially when your favorite song comes on in the middle of a race.

There is really very little more to say about Project Gotham Racing 4 that you can't experience in game for yourself. All of the things mentioned should be the key factors when you're deciding whether or not to buy the game. PGR4 is an excellent racing game and though I may have been hard on it because it lacked the polish of previous iterations in the franchise, it is by no means a bad game. Is it a great game? That depends on you. If you don't really like racing games at all then I still think PGR4 is worth a rental - it's a fun game by any standards and, who knows, you might fall in love with it like I have. If you're even remotely a race fan then it's a great game and you will enjoy it if you have any interest in cars or racing. The lack of polish may turn old-school fans away, but it is still definitely worth a play, even if it is only a rental.

Reviewed by Andrew Bennett for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).