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The Xbox 360 may not be flooding with titles since launch in November, but one of the genres getting the most attention it seems, is racing. Whether it’s the less-than-legal street racing of Need for Speed, the arcadey feel of Ridge Racer, the simulator style of Project Gotham, or the break-neck speed of Burnout, the 360 has racers covered. With so much competition, one has to be wise when picking up a racer for the next gen Xbox. Project Gotham Racing 3 is the only first party racer on the platform; it’s also one of the finest.

PGR3 has quite the reputation to maintain thanks to the success it’s predecessors have seen on the original Xbox, but for the most part, it gets the job done with flying colors. Everything you loved about the Gotham series is well intact, and then some.

The kudos system of titles past is still intact, this time with 16 different ways to gain kudos including slides and big air. The more of these kudos tricks you perform, the higher your ranking becomes. When you raise in rank, you unlock new cars. It’s a simple system, and one that works just as well this time as it has in the past. Earning medals during races will unlock yet more races to participate in. Nothing innovative there.

Difficulty comes in spades in PGR3, from the unforgiving A.I. opponents to getting your racing tricks down pat. In this case, one is very much related to the other, because in most cases, screwing up even once can mean the different between first and third place. Once you find yourself any real distance away from the A.I., you can pretty much just give up and restart the race, because there’s a good chance that gap is only going to get bigger as the race goes on. This balance helps keep the game very challenging and engaging for the right gamer, but others will find the trial and error gameplay to be extremely tedious and at times, damn frustrating.

PGR 3 is chalk full of modes and features for the hungry racing fan. There’s the obvious Career mode to play through, which can, at times, become very repetitive due to the real lack of fresh modes to play through. The familiar cone races, time tests and straight out races are all here as can be expected, but PGR 3 offers nothing really fresh to the experience. One of the cooler additions to PGR 3 is called the Gotham Heroes channel. This mode, which is purely for spectatorship, allows you to watch the best players in the world as they shred up the asphalt. You can also hop over to the Friends TV channel and watch your buddies play, too, if you feel so inclined. Neat.

You can also hop into Photo Editor mode, which allows you to take pics of races, then edit them in a Photoshop-like program. There’s also a Create a Route mode that allows you to create your own route through the games five cities. It’s a cool feature that should keep you and your friends busy while playing online.

If all the gameplay modes and features aren’t enough to tickle your fancy, a few seconds glance at the amazing graphics should do it. PGR 3 is easily one of the most visually impressive games the 360 has. The car models are sleek and reflective and the environments look fantastic. The games soundtrack has a wide variety of music, though a large portion of the songs are techno. There’s some hip hop, rock, classical and way more included on the soundtrack, and while a lot of the tracks don’t really work for the game, you can’t help but find the selection interesting.

Overall, PGR 3 doesn’t stray too far from the tried and true formula of its previous entries, but that’s just fine as far as I’m concerned. There’s a reason the PGR series has found such a large following amongst Xbox gamers, and PGR 3 is a perfect place to start if you haven’t already familiarized yourself with the franchise. I still prefer Burnout’s super fast, violent race style to PGR 3’s arcade/sim, but for those looking for what PGR has to offer, this one’s a shoe-in.