There's something about PGR that screams fun from the moment you yank that acceleration trigger and burn off the start line.
In fact, there are loads of things: the balance of realism and arcade forgiveness in the spot-on handling; the exhilarating sense of speed you can carry around bends; the notion of endless variety provided by the courses and, of course, the all-important Kudos system. PGR4 has it all!
Yes, it's safe to say that if you have even a remote thirst for speed you can't go wrong with this. It's got fast cars, a billion courses (give or take) and the sweetest, most satisfying handling of any 'realistic' racer.
And if you're a massive fan of the series, how does the introduction of bikes, four new cities (Macau, St Petersburg, Shanghai and Quebec), an incredible new weather system, a revised Kudos system, a new career mode and a polished online mode sound? Your answer should be "awesome".
Of all the changes though, the bikes are what all the hoo-ha has been about so let's get them out of the way first. And let's not beat around the bush.
Shut up and drive We don't like the bikes. There you have it. It's the biggest new feature and we're throwing it straight down the loo. Why? When bikes were announced for PGR, the first question on everyone's mind was how it will be balanced? Despite Bizzare's best efforts, the bikes just don't fit in, and if anything, it's the efforts made to create a level playing field that defeats the whole idea.
The idea of a bike is that its unwieldy, difficult-to-ride and dangerous in nature is paid off by its extreme acceleration speed and superior cornering ability. That's their big reward. In short, if you keep a bike's wheel on the ground, they own cars for speed. But for the sake of balance and fairness in bike vs. car racing, these rewards have to be taken away in PGR4.
So you end up with a flattened bike experience: they're no faster than the cars, corner with roughly the same speed, yet still pose the increased risk of falling off, particularly in barging scraps in which the bulky cars always win, and more challenging handling.
And on top of all that, the bikes' leaning tendencies make playing in the inside view bloody tough (even for seasoned PGR-ers) and so we end up using the external 'only for rubbish girls' view, which feels much slower. Give us an Enzo any day.
This doesn't mean the bikes are total crap - they're still fun, just not nearly as much fun as cars. It would have been a better decision to keep the bikes and cars separate in the game, so instead of trying to balance the two, Bizarre could have concentrated its supreme talent on making the bikes the high-speed, nippy cornering rockets they're supposed to be.
Fortunately, you're barely ever forced to use the bikes in the main career mode, so you can essentially pretend they're not there, like we did and you will.
Kudos to your career Another big change is the increased focus on kudos in the career mode. This reformed mode works like a world tour - you progress through an in-game calendar, racing in mini championships.
Each championship consists of multiple events - from the usual selection of street racing, cone challenges, hot laps etc. Your aim is to win championships and earn Gotham Career Points to move up a Career leaderboard until you're number one.
The big difference is it no longer matters that you come first in every event, because your finishing position in a race (or your achieved score in any other event) simply awards you bonus kudos on top of your on-track kudos, and it's the total kudos earned in each championship that dictates the winner.
This is a good thing for some and bad for others. For moderate players, you can progress through the game simply by doing the best you can, without the worry of having to complete an essential target position, time or score in every race. That also obliterates the need to restart tougher races several times (which has been a common aspect of PGR since the beginning).
But for PGR experts it'll feel like a bit of a cop-out. You have the skills to pass tough challenges but the very fact you're not forced to changes everything. In fact, the game does the opposite and forces you to move on to the next race despite your performance - once you finish a race, pass or fail, there's no option to restart, which PGR pros who DO want to achieve every target will find infuriating.
To retry a failed race you have to wait for the in-game 'racing season' to start again, by which time you've forgotten the situation that was at hand and what you needed to do differently in order to win.
Arcade mode A more traditional PGR experience can be found in the trusty Arcade mode however - which is meaty enough to have been the sole single-player experience in itself. It contains ten racing chapters, each one made up of 12 challenges (six for bikes, six for cars), and each challenge awarding you a medal for winning.
Each chapter is themed, so one might be all about racing on high-speed courses with long straights, while another might focus on skill driving, again focus on those unique kudos mechanics.
There have been changes made to the Kudos system too. Kudos is awarded for many of the same reasons as before - powersliding, jumping, drafting, clean sections and clean overtaking. Now you can get points for reaching a certain speed (around 170mph) and staying there, or taking corners perfectly, as well as pulling wheelies on the bikes.
It's still such a brilliant feeling to pull a slide and hear that satisfying ticking sounds as those points mount up. Slamming the wall still robs you of your unsecured kudos but this punishment has fortunately been relaxed, so you won't be penalised for light grazes and even small bumps into the wall.
The kudos multiplier system has been replaced with a new Kudos Stars mechanic. Stars are given for tricks pulled over elongated periods of time in one go. Awarded in sets of five at a time, once you reach the fifth star you have to stop pulling tricks to collect your reward, and then continue again for more.
We found this odd because it forces you to cut short your trickery as opposed to keeping it going for as long as possible as promoted in PGR3 (which we prefer). And besides that, these stars most of the time seem to count for nothing, except in a new Superstar event.
The new Superstar challenge demands that you earn a set number of Kudos Stars within a time limit. It's one of a few new challenges that offer new ways to test your powersliding skillz.
Cone gate challenges are gone, having been replaced by the (more fun) Cone Sprint event, which has you speeding around a lap littered with cones in as quick a time as you can, with three-second penalties introduced for every cone you hit. There's also a new Cove Attack challenge, in which you race around a course ploughing into clusters of cones to hit down a target number within a time limit. It's all good fun.
But the real meat of PGR has, and always will be, in the speed events; the street races, hot laps, timed runs, overtaking challenges, and elimination races. They're all here and make up the same, fantastic driving experience as in previous games in the series.
These are what PGR is known and renowned for - it's the stuff that stops PGR from becoming just another racing game. And the introduction of a dynamic (and extremely gorgeous) weather system only adds to that.
Weather the storm PGR takes weather to another level. In racing games, when it rains you get a wet course and looser handling. In PGR, you get bloody great puddles that cause your car to aquaplane out of control if hit at high-speed without due skill.
Think of a hot lap around a course covered with patches of snow that effect the racing line. Or thick fog that makes upcoming bends tough to see in time. It's brilliant.
There's just one fundamental problem with the series that PGR4 has again failed to overcome. Going fast in PGR is so good that that's all we want to do. So while we appreciate the huge range of events in here, we can't help but feel a sense of disappointment every time the career mode throws us into an event that doesn't involve going as fast as fook.
Speed vs Kudos is one such thrill-ending event that doesn't do it for us. You have to reach the end of a course in a specified time, while earning kudos to pause the timer. But, as more advanced racing fans will know, powersliding slows you down and is far slower than taking a bend with retained traction.
So you won't have enough time to reach the end by driving without sliding, so we resort to snaking around the course; pulling tiny skids left and right along straights to keep the kudos ticking up and the timer paused. We essentially break the game.
But it's not a disaster of a problem, and once you've got the single player game out of the way it's the online mode that you'll turn, where speed is all you need to worry about.
PGR on demand PGR's online integration really goes a long way to making this the Halo 3 of racing games in that arena. In the gameplay department you've got an online TrueSkill rank that sees you racing in ranked bouts to climb up a leaderboard that's similar to the Career leaderboard of the offline Career mode.
You choose to race in pre-set championships of varying scenarios and the game matches you with players of a similar TrueSkill ranking. It also caters for the community's different players. If you're a corner-barging bully there're modes in there full of you brutes.
On the other hand, if you're one of those 'serious' race types that throws a wobbly at even the slightest of nudging during a race, you'll find like-minded people in one mode that forces everyone to use the internal cockpit view and manual gears.
And in the non-gameplay arena, the photo and replay-saving options are much like Bungie's shooter's - you can take, upload and share everything from pictures, replays, lap times and probably a portion of your soul, too, and it can all be found on the community website, www.pgrnations.com.
Final lap Needless to say, this is one huge game, and a brilliant racing experience from the start. Games like Forza and Gran Turismo have telemetry data and tyre temperatures. Games like Burnout and Flat-Out have mindless, girl-friendly handling. PGR just has fun. By the bucket load.
Nothing compares to nailing the accelerator of a Ferrari in a PGR game and hearing that engine roar, or throwing these believable but easily manageable cars around bends sideways and getting that sweet ticking reward for your skill.
The PGR series just seems to get better with each version, and this seems to be no exception...at the top of my pile for my racing pleasures this shall be.
The idea of a bike is that its unwieldy, difficult-to-ride and dangerous in nature is paid off by its extreme acceleration speed and superior cornering ability
What? Bikes are generally slower than cars around the corners. This makes no sense. Not many cars can keep up with a bike on the straights, but on the bendy stuff, the cars gain the advantage right back. What you're saying here is that the bike is faster on straights *and* in corners. That's like.. all there is to a racetrack!
I have sent my lamebox for repair for the 3rd time since having it ! I want to play this game tomorrow!! Oh well iam gonna buy an elite tomorrow with a copy of pgr4 haha
I just got this today and I can't help but think that it's a wee bit pants. Okay it's got nice graphics and weather effects (which is where I think the 9.5 score came from) but the thing that matters.. the handling... it's.. well... s**t to be honest. The bikes don't handle like bikes, and the cars go round corners like you're driving on glass...
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Looks brilliant, especially with weather
I'm in love. 
Oh well iam gonna buy an elite tomorrow with a copy of pgr4 haha 
