Project Gotham Racing 3

And now for something genuinely next-gen on Xbox 360.

Every new console launch needs a killer-app and Bizarre Creation's Project Gotham Racing is just that, a superb racing game with plenty for you to see and do, all wrapped up in a beautifully lit package.

Get beyond a clunky menu system and you'll discover a wonderful world of racing action in Bizarre Creation's Project Gotham Racing 3. The game is centred on a single player career where the player earns Kudos points and credits for succeeding in a variety of events such as races, eliminators and time trials.

As before, the game is very scaleable, with an option of tackling each event on one of five difficulty levels. Of course, tackling it on higher levels means more rewards and the chance to earn achievements to brag about via Xbox Live. The AI certainly seems more intelligent than Gran Turismo 4 and rarely causes stupid accidents through lack of decent programming.

Compared to previous games in the series, PGR3 is a much more open affair. Each event is tailored to the car you choose to drive, so in theory you can complete the whole single player career with just one car. But with plenty of credits on offer, you'll soon be tempted to buy tens of cars and enjoy walking around them in various lovingly created garages.

An online career compliments the offline single-player component, but you are limited to cars you've already bought while playing solo. Of course, the biggest draw in the game is the excellent multiplayer action via Xbox Live. Just like PGR2, this is going to be a very popular game online until we see a sequel.

There are some quirks with the online play though, such as a host's inability to lock the car class of a race. Instead he/she has to rely on the co-operation of other players. In something of a first, at least for a console game, it's possible to save and watch replays from your multiplayer races.

Alas the stunning replays aren't always available across the whole game. Strangely it's not possible to watch replays of your efforts in the Race Against the Clock (time trial) mode. Nor are replays supported when racing on custom circuits you've created from the game's city streets of Las Vegas, New York, London and Tokyo.

The inclusion of a wonderful version of The Nurburgring is one of the game's many highlights, especially as it's provided in several forms that also take advantage of Nurburgring's F1 circuit in addition to the 13-mile leviathan that is the Nordschleife circuit. Hopefully we'll be seeing some of the city streets expanded in downloadable content because, London especially, seems rather cut down compared to the larger available area in the first game in this series on Dreamcast - Metropolis Street Racer.