I went over to my old roommate Chad's house the other night. Another friend Damon sold Chad his old computer so we all three got together for some gaming. Chad had an XBox and Project Gotham Racing (good game - try it if you haven't). We only had 2 controllers so we played winner stays loser sits out style. All the cars were unlocked so naturally we picked the fastest like the Ferrari F50 and the Porsche Carrera GT.

Even though we were picking like cars, my friends were getting their asses trounced. So Chad comes up with this handicap plan: Each time I win a race, I have to downgrade my car one notch until both Chad and Damon beat me using whatever car they want. I should point out here that the slowest car Chad or Damon ever used was the Carrera GT. There are around 30 cars in the game, so we started joking that I would get down to fhe Ford Focus Cosworth before they would beat me. The cars I was relegated to racing were getting so slow that I had to get a good start and ram my opponent's ass and spin him out. Then I just raced a clean race hoping he wouldn't catch up. Around an hour and a half and 18 cars later Chad & Damon both finally beat me while I was racing, guess what, the Focus. It was racing at it's finest.

Anyone else seen anything this pathetic before? To their credit, I'm sure they could both kick my ass in the football game of their choosing. But, I would say I'd beat them if they were using a little league team and I were using a Super Bowl winning team.

Project Gotham Racing was made by the same team that did Metropolis Street Racer for the Dreamcast. Both games have this 'Kudos' scoring system which gives you points for drift turning and powersliding, etc. It's fun to see how much Kudos you can get but neither game features nearly as many cars, tracks or race choices as GT3. The racing action is a little more arcade feel than GT3, but then again GT3 is still arcade feel compared to the PC based race sims. I wouldn't buy an XBox just for Gotham though.

Yeah, it's pretty easy just to pick up and play as opposed to GT3. I was racing with the same guys again the other night. I can't remember which track we were on, but it was a really tight one. These guys are bad enough that I lost by 2 seconds using a Mini Cooper against an F50.