YMMV / Project Gotham Racing

• Awesome Music: PGR had many beautiful songs. Ranging from fist-pumping Electronic Music, skull-crushing Industrial, head-bang friendly Heavy Metal, to moving rock music, and EVEN lovely classical music, this is musical heaven.
  • the first one has "19-2000" by Gorillaz.
  • 2 has an epic theme song made in Italy, "Satellite" by Romina Arena, and "Don't Want Her To Stay" by Hot Action Cop.
  • 3 has "Helicopter" by BlocParty, Black History Month" by Death from Above 1979, "Carbon Kid" by Alpinestars, "Switchback" by Celldweller, "Menelec" by Squarepusher, "20 Hz" by Covenant, "Krafty" by New Order, "Tribulations" by LCD Soundsystem, " "Crawl" by Absynthesis (incorrectly credited as Lunatex in game), "The Big Jump" by The Chemical Brothers, "Little Sister" by Queens of the Stone Age, "The Ace, The Only" by Atlas Plug, "Pressure" by Skindred, "Blood And Thunder" by Mastodon, "Start a War" by Static-X, "Undone" (incorrectly named in game as "All You Ever Wanted") by Deadstar Assembly, "Stand Up" by Stromkern, "Walking" by mind.in.a.box and "Come To Daddy (Pappy Mix)" by Aphex Twin.
  • 4 has the main theme, "Shadow" by The Prodigy, "Identity" by mind.in.a.box, "Isolated" by Insekt, "The Prayer" by Bloc Party, T. Raumschmiere's remix of "Lovely 2 C U" by Goldfrapp, "Keep Hope Alive" by The Crystal Method, "Wolf Like Me" by TV on the Radio, "Over and Over" by Hot Chip, "Black Gloves" by Goose, "Watch The Tapes" by LCD Soundsystem, "Our Velocity" by Maxïmo Park, "House of Wolves" by My Chemical Romance, "Ruby" by Kaiser Chiefs and, for satisfying the Metal Head world, "Stricken" by Disturbed, "Dimension" by Wolfmother, "King of the Stereo" by Saliva and "Light Grenades" by Incubus.
  • Bonus points for 3: it detains the Guinness World Record for "Largest Licensed Racing Game Soundtrack", with 90 songs in the playlist!
• Best Level Ever: Every Major tournament in the career mode of PGR4. The first is a time-attack based tournament, in which the 8 racers who post the fastest times on the 3 rounds will face each other in a final last-man-standing race; the second is multiple-bracket tournament, with the final being an Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny between two racers; the third and last one is like the second, but taken up to eleven: the final round is a race between 4 racers instead of just two.
• Broken Base: The PGR fandom is in an argument on which PGR for Xbox 360 is better: a part of the fanbase prefers 3 for the humongous soundtrack, the Level Editor, the bigger number of gameplay modes available for both online and offline playing, the all-star cast of supercars (none of the cars in 3 go below 170 MPH) and the advanced management of car garages. Others cherish 4 for the wider and more balanced car roster, the more immersive career mode, the wider selection of race tracks, the Driving Test mode, and obviously better graphics.
• Disappointing Last Level: The final race in 3 is quite easy, even on Platinum difficulty.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Of the entire racing video game genre, as the series proves to be very popular despite being discontinued.
• Event-Obscuring Camera:
  • The fourth game has camera issues in the form of the in-car/helmet camera. Specifically, how it impedes your ability to drive some of the cars properly from that view. Unlike the third game, in which the game always provided you with its own gauges/readouts of vehicle speed, gear selection, and engine speed no matter what view you were in, in the 4th game, it does not do so for the cockpit view (which incidentally was introduced into the series in the 3rd game), instead making you reliant on the interior model's gauges and readouts to get the info you need. How the camera screws with you here is that either the interior point-of-view is usually a bit too far back from the gauges and makes them hard to read, or it's mis-elevated (too high/low) and allows the steering wheel to block a part of the instrument panel or, in extreme cases, ALL of it. What makes this worse is that these screws made some cars returning from the 3rd game undrivable when using the helmet cam to various degrees, due to a change in seating position from their PGR3 counterparts.
  • Returning car made mildly undrivable: The TVR Sagaris. The cockpit view in the 3rd game gave you a clear view of every important element in the instrument panel, from the analog speedo and tach, to the shift-up warning lights above them, and the digital; numerical readouts of vehicle speed, engine speed, and gear selection below the analog gauges. In the fourth game, the helmet POV is lowered such that the wheel is now blocking those digital readouts, leaving only the analog gauges visible.
  • Returning car made a nightmare to drive: The Aston Martin DBR9 race car. The 3rd game's cockpit view of this car gave you a clear line-of-sight on the digital gear/speed/revs readout. The 4th game's cockpit view is altered as such that the readout is not visible, again due to the steering wheel obstructing it.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Ridge Racer.
• Game-Breaker: The Ferrari F50 GT in 3. Wanna know why it has been referenced so much in the main page? It is the most expensive car in the game (it costs 1.3 million credits!) for a reason. Very fast, lightning-quick acceleration, ungodly handling and grip, and it drifts well enough to give you a ton of Kudos!
  • At the beginning of PGR3, there is another example of Game-Breaker. See that Ultima GTR? Yes, that cute, little speedster? It's substantially a toned-down F50 GT.
  • Another example in 3 is the final concept car unlocked in the game: the RUF Supercar Concept. It doesn't go nearly as fast nor handles as good as the Ferrari F50 GT, but has a much more controllable drifting. In fact, this car is sometimes used for world records, alongside the F50 GT and the Ultima GTR.
• Killer App: PGR3 was definitely one of them at the launch of the Xbox 360. PGR4 could've been one of them, if it wasn't for Forza Motorsport 2, which was released at around the same time as PGR4 and stripped the killer app title from the game. It didn't help much that weeks before, most Xbox 360 players were too busy playing Halo 3, which hindered some of PGR4's sales.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: Geometry Wars, to the point that it spun off into its own series and debatably became more well known than its origins.
• That One Level: Nürburgring's The Behemoth is essentially the F1 circuit combined with the longer - and much harder - Nordschleife route and holy shit does it take forever to beat in just one lap!
  • Tokyo's Crazy Turns from 4 has near impossible turns at every possible area.
  • The Las Vegas Boulevard Tour might be the longest level in the game other than Nürburgring. It's awesome to look at, though.
  • Macau Hairpin from 4. With all those sharp corners, and being an incredibly long level, it easily ranks with The Behemoth as one of the hardest racetracks in the game.
  • New York's The Bridge Tour in 3. Despite being by far the fastest racetrack in the game, its sudden tight corners can really catch people off-guard. No wonder it got demoted to an unlockable in 4!