Project Gotham Racing 3 (Xbox 360, 2005)

If you're into fast cars and fast paced driving, this is the game for you! Bizarre Creations took an intresting approach to the racing genre with a game the blends realistic physics with a dash of arcade racing. The game still requires you to take a good racing line in order to be fast, however there are a lot of assists to help you maintain control in most situations, making you feel like you're in total control. The game has a decent number of cars, about 80. Mainly high class exotics, there's only one real muscle car which I wish they changed, but what can you do, but hey this is one of the few games that has the McLaren F1 LM road car! The awesome thing about this game is all the cars in the game are capable of having a top speed of AT LEAST 170MPH. The down side is you can not customize them, besides changing the colour of the paint. The main advantage of this is it keeps a level playing field in the online mode, so it's really down to picking a car that suits your driving style and your true skill. You'll find that the solo career mode is great for unlocking achievements but some of the challenges are pretty redundant. Hot lap, timed lap and even breakthrough are pretty much the same challenge mode, except in one the clock counts up and in the other the clock counts down. After you beat the solo career you'll probably find yourself on online career most of the time. This is where you challenge the best in the world and work your way up. You have a true skill ranking which is assesed by your performance in each rank letting other players know your relative driving skill, then you have a world rank which you progress through as you win races or do well against higher ranked opponents. Just like in Halo 2's ranking system your world rank goes up and down depending on your performance, your kudos ranking however keeps on climbing since you can't lose kudos. If you got an XBOX 360 and you're into driving games, you gotta pick this one up.