The series has always revolved around "Kudos" or points that are rewarded to you for racing well or with style. Whereas the previous games were very strict in terms of events and races requiring you to be a perfect driver, PGR4 breaks that mold to an extent. There is much more racing this time around, and far less restarting over and over until you achieve that perfect, stylish lap. Kudos still play a huge part of the scoring and unlocking system, but its all much more casual and enjoyable now.

Project Gotham Racing 4 sort of takes the best of a lot of the more serious driving titles, and distills them down to their most exciting parts. What you have left is awesome cars (and now bikes), cool locales, solid driving physics and none of the tuner fuss and muss. You race or enter events, either to earn medals in Arcade Mode or to become the #1 racer in Career Mode while earning your Kudos, and the game remains very focused throughout. The Career Mode alone makes the game at least twice as long as PGR3. Customized Race returns as well, which allows you to tweak the game's many courses and just play around with the vehicles. Along with the always fun photo mode, you can now upload and share your custom photos and race replays and even vote on those who have done the same directly from within the game or the official PGR website (PGRNations.com). There's nothing all too overwhelming, and there's a comfortable amount of options, difficulty levels and modes which should keep most racers busy for a while. Of course, there's also a ridiculous amount of online multiplayer games and content to extend the replay even further. I do miss the more accessible PGR TV and the cool game ticker of PGR3 that gave the game a more connected, community feel.

I'm torn regarding the fact that motorcycles have been added to the game. The bikes are awesome, and for the most part can easily blow away the vehicles, but something about the mixed races seems wrong in PGR4. It worked in MotorStorm since they were able to design parts of the courses with the bikes and other various vehicles in mind, although again, I do appreciate the variety. On the other hand, knocking the riders off can be a lot of fun.

Project Gotham Racing 4 is a really, really polished-looking racer. It's only running at 30fps, but with just a perfect amount of motion blur applied the game always looks impressive in motion. The courses and environments are probably the most detailed in a racing game yet, and add in on top of that some excellent weather and lighting effects and you have a beauty of a game. The vehicles are gorgeous and very faithfully recreated; though don't try to compare them to those in Forza 2 or Gran Turismo HD Concept/5 Prologue. Unlike those more sim-type racers, Bizarre spent an equal amount of time on the tracks as well as vehicles, so the whole visual package is very pleasing.

I'm one of those gamers who never, ever uses custom soundtracks as I prefer to just listen to the music that was chosen by the game's designers. Like the rest of the game, the soundtrack has a very international feel with plenty of interesting tracks from around the world. The playlist actually behaves a little unexpectedly, with not quite random playback and songs or stations repeating too often. You do have the ability to just manually switch the, with the d-pad, so it's never really an issue. The vehicle sounds are deep and powerful, and will suitably rock your sound system. The bikes absolutely scream at high speeds.

Every aspect of Project Gotham Racing 4 is top notch, yet it feels just a little too much like the same racer we've been playing for years, even with all the changes. There's a lot more racing competition on the Xbox 360 these days and PGR4 still performs well enough to race to the top.