Great Expectations

The PGR4 excitement continues to grow. Downloaded the demo from X-Box Live this afternoon.

First things first it's a very generous demo. There doesn't seem to be any time constraint and there's an arcade challenge with 5 or 6 events giving you a good flavour of what's on offer and they can be attempted in a small selection of vehicles. As usual you can attempt them in five flavours of medal (tin, bronze, silver, gold or platinum) and there's an online leaderboard which will show either worldwide or friends based leaderboards. For the gamer on a tight budget you could easily spend an evening in it's company and not get bored.

Secondly it looks and sounds very good. Especially when the dynamic weather kicks in. Racing a Ferrari in the dry is tough work. When the rain starts pouring not only does it look amazing it becomes a whole new ball park. I couldn't decide what was scarier.. The occasional flash of lightening or the sound of the tyres aqua planeing across standing water.

The track design is as devious as it was back in the second game and once again getting a feel for the circuits and knowing what's coming up is as important as skill behind the wheel. The driving model is slightly different with the cars seeming to be a lot less tail happy which means when you power drift or induce hand brake over steer it feels well earned and needs a lot of skill to carry the Kudos earned out of the corner.

The risk/reward balance seems very good and it'll take a lot of effort, one feels, to start nailing perfect laps.

Overall I'm very very happy with how this is shaping up. Roll on Friday. I'm in Love.