10.25.07

Review: PGR4

Posted in Gaming at 9:47 am by Silesti

When I saw the case, sitting innocently on the rack I have to admit to a frisson of excitement! PGR3 was my favourite driving game on the 360, the benchmark against which all others have been measured since. Could this new one be as good.. better.. different..? It has bike in! Hmm well if you are a biker like me this is a mixed blessing, and let me explain why.

The dynamics and experience of riding a motorcycle are a unique, physically immersive, experience. One which it is VERY difficult to reproduce on screen. when you are actually riding a bike your attention and focus is well ahead of where you actually are. On track you are looking at the next corner as you are running through the current one, on the road you are scanning ahead, running a constant risk assessment for potholes, overbanding, manhole covers, branches, idiot car drivers on mobiles phones etc, etc, etc.

The most realistic on-board view of any motorbike sim is the one where you remain fairly level and the bike moves underneath you, however in real life you are only peripherally aware of the screen, dash etc as your focus is well ahead as I’ve already described. The crisply focussed and detailed rendering of the bike in PGR4 and the others (MotoGP etc), while very pretty, actually detracts from the gameplay and takes you’re eye away from where it should be. My solution would be that as the speed increases the dash becomes more transparent allowing you to focus only on the where the main action is.

The other unique element of riding a motorbike is the point and speed at which when you turn the bars left, you turn right. It’s a slow speed thing, at the lower speeds turning the bars in the direction you want to go it the right thing to do, but once you are rolling you use the rolling radius of the tyres to change direction, a gentle movement of the bars to the left causes the bike to roll onto the right hand side of the tyre and the curvature of the tyre means the bike goes right too. Try it with a disposable cup it’s the same thing, the wider rim travels further than the narrower base so it changes direction.. neat huh?!

Now I realise that translating these physics into something which is reproducable in a game engine may be a stretch, and certainly we are not going to see anything like the immersive physical experience of actually riding a bike for a good while yet so this is a largely academic discussion, BUT it is surely not beyond the realms of possibility to have the slow speed manoeuvering sorted out?! At standstill and walking pace, bikes do not pivot round some magical central point, when pulling away or moving at a slow rate they don’t get steered by flopping from knee to knee… gravity has an issue with that kind of thing!

ANYWAY! PGR4… I’m very impressed. The technical elements have been improved immensely, in particular exercises like the cone gates. In PGR3 these were the simply 2 cones and I found them a little hard to judge. In PGR4 they are well defined, and offer more of a guide to where you should be.
The graphics are superb, in particular I was running around the Nurburgring F1 track in the rain and when looking down the straight you can see the rain sweeping across the track in bands.. you’ve seen it happen in real life, there’s a gentle wind blowing, the rain is coming down and as it bounces on the road you can see the waves and curtains moving ahead of you. It’s actually quite lovely!

BBRRAAGH! Sorry got a bit poetic there… It’s fast, loud, tense, challenging and the new format for progression – running through a calendar and choosing which championships to run in – provides a much more dynamic element to the career progression. The cars are fantastic (I’m a Mercedes fan all over again) and even the bike bits are OK, if you separate yourself from real-life biking experience.

If you haven’t got it, buy it! If you have, find me on Live!

- Silesti

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