Bizarre finished with PGR4 content [CVG]

Celebrate Valentine's Day with new DLC from one of the top 3 racing games on Xbox 360. One's free, one will cost you. Here are the full details:

Free Challenge Pack (Free) "Download the new Free PGR 4 Challenge Pack from Bizarre, and you'll drive the hydrogen-powered 2007 Peugeot Flux, winner of the 2007 Peugeot International Design Competition. Plus, you'll get two new game modes-one of them the player-requested Tourist Mode, which lets you tool around any city in the game checking out sights with your friends. Or play Free Roam Cat and Mouse, where a slow mouse vehicle must avoid enemy cats. And you add another 7 achievements. Get more racing fun for the best price-free!"

Premium Challenge Pack (400 points)
"The Premium PGR 4 Challenge Pack from Bizarre, available for 400 Microsoft(r) Points, gives you seven new cars-the 2008 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible Concept, 2007 Volkswagen Golf GTI W12-650, 2007 Peugeot Flux, 1987 BMW M3 E30 DTM, 2007 Ferrari 430 Scuderia, 2008 Honda S2000 CR, and 2008 Callaway C16 Speedster. You get three new bikes-the 2007 Yamaha YZF-R1, 1995 Aprilia RS 250, and 1998 Aprilia RSV 1000 Tuono R."

"Plus, new World Challenge Arcade Mode gives you 20 arcade events in 3 themed chapters, including 5 events that can only be done on platinum. In Tourist Mode, get a free ride with friends around any game city. In Free Roam Cat and Mouse, a slow mouse vehicle runs from enemy cats. Ten new achievements fill out the pack."

Russ Swift, UK's top stunt driver, was hired by Microsoft to burn a good luck message with skid marks onto the parking lot of Battersea Power Station for Formula One racer Lewis Hamilton.

Swift created the Project Gotham Racing 4 stunt with a sports car, a motorcycle and three sets of tires. The end result: a 50-foot Go Lewis, meant to cheer Hamilton on for this weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix.

Hit the jump for the full press release and unfortunate Freudian Slip.

LONDON WISHES 'GOOD LUCK' TO LEWIS HAMILTON WITH GIANT MESSAGE MADE OF CAR SKID MARKS

October 18th 2007: Battersea Power Station was engulfed with engine noise and screeching tyre smoke this morning, as a special message of good luck was embezzled onto the ground for Lewis Hamilton ahead of this weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix, which could see him walk away as Formula One World Champion.

As these pictures show, the message was created entirely by the skid marks of a sports car and a motorbike, using blistering wheelspins and breakneck handbrake turns to lay rubber onto the tarmac to produce the words 'Go Lewis!' in giant 50-foot lettering.

And while bemused onlookers assumed the stunt was related to the filming of the new Batman movie, currently taking place at the iconic Battersea landmark, it was in fact nothing to do with the the caped hero of Gotham City - but a very different type of Gotham. The message was created for the launch of the biggest racing game yet on the Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®, 'Project Gotham Racing 4™' (Bizarre Creations/Microsoft Games Studio), a high-adrenalin arcade racing title which rewards players with death-defying slides and sideways driving. The concept of 'Skid Art' is also the theme of the Project Gotham Racing 4 TV advertisement currently being aired.

Driving the Caterham sports car in the pictures was the UK's top stunt driver, Russ Swift, who got through three sets of tyres to create the image.

Xbox wishes Lewis Hamilton the very best of luck in Brazil this weekend!

The truth is a cold, kittenless void, isn't it?

Project Gotham Racing 4 is less than a month away so Microsoft decided that now would be a good time to ship out a batch of new screenshots all taken with the game's Photo Mode. Hey, did you realize you can view pics captured in Photo Mode in 3D by using a standard pair of red and blue glasses and turning on the 3D glasses cheat? I had no clue.

New batches of PGR4 screens are expected every Thursday until the game's release, we're told.

We were impressed with the innovative and the extreme car designs submitted; We hope that Mihai Panaitescu will be excited when he sees The Flux faithfully created on the Xbox 360.

Hmmm, this seems an interesting lesson in spin control.

On July 27, a Bizarre Creations staffer posted on their forums that the upcoming Project Gotham Racing 4 won't have day and night versions of their tracks in the game because "Whilst this wasn't a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD. So we've worked around the problem by providing different lighting models per city."

Seems pretty straight forward, right? But when people sorta went quasi-ape-shit pointing out, rightfully so, that perhaps the medium (DVD) is holding back the game, Bizarre Creations cranked up their spin machine and issued a response under the befuddling headline "Wrong end of stick been grasped?"

In it they seem to blame "fanboys" for the spin on their story, instead of the person in their company who actually said the DVD didn't have enough space.

But the DVD has plenty of space, they say now: "DVD size is absolutely not a factor that we consider when designing our games... and PGR4 is no exception. DVD9 gives us more than we need to create a fabulous experience for you guys."

Notice the word "designing", does that mean that it is a factor when they actually get down to creating them? Because it certainly seems so. BC goes on to write that the issue of no night and day was one caused by developer time and resources, which directly contradicts what was posted in their forums. They had to pick and choose what they wanted to spend development time on and they went with dynamic weather rather than time of day.

The question now is who do we believe: Bizarre Creations or Bizarre Creations?

Disc-oh? Wrong end of stick grasped?

Compared to PGR3, 4 has twice the number of locations, improved graphics, and of course, bikes. The focus is on "you" being the star, so you customize your character's profile with stuff like your country so that you can participate in regional competitions online. Each region then goes on to send their best to world competitions, which will crown a world champion PGR player in the end. Pretty neat.

The environmental effects are definitely something to notice. There's rain, snow, ice, and even puddles on the ground, all affecting your driving. The snow and rain change your car's exterior to a have a "rain" effect, but the real interesting view is the cockpit view. When you're inside the car, you can see the water go up the windshield and around the side windows. Looks quite realistic, and should spice up the cockpit view enough that you'll want to be inside even with the decreased visibility.

As for bikes, the developers are trying to make them as "Project Gotham" as possible. Which is to say, more arcadey and less realistic in the effort to keep things fun. You can bump and grind into other bikes and cars, but if you go too hard or ram into a wall at the wrong angle you'll fall off and have to get back on.

You can play your career mode on either a bike or a car, and most races will have at least one bike to give everything a nice mix. So bikes are definitely in there in a big way. We asked how the racing wheel will work on bikes (it works fine on cars), but the PR referee chimed in and said they didn't have anything to say about that at this time.

Other cool things are volumetric fog—which you can actually get up and over in parts of levels—the presence of arcade mode like in PGR2, party and team races in online modes, regional championships, Gotham on Demand (a YouTube-like system to share and view video recordings of races), and "left of center" achievements.

Oh, and there isn't going to be a Geometry Wars Galaxies in this game, but there is going to be something along those lines.

From what I can see in the video it looks like those water effects are simply static skins attached to the cars, and not some sort of magical dynamic rivuletation system. Still pretty, but until I have to pull a t-shirt out of the back to wipe the condensation off the front windshield, driving games will never truly be real. Michael Fahey

The Peugeot Design Contest recently wrapped up and the judges selected that beauty above for inclusion in Project Gotham Racing 4.

Here's a word from the designer of the Flux:

The name Flux was inspired by the continuous change and flow of our daily lives during work and play. The shape also represents this flow with transitions through hard and smooth lines, between straight and curved all of which are characteristics of Peugeot. A relatively small car (3500cm long by 1650cm wide), it runs on a slim hydrogen power plant hidden in the back along with the tank mounted under the front bonnet. The hood and side body panels are made from plastic, polyurethane for the seats and aluminium for the mechanical parts. The main components such as the chassis and head protection are metal.

Made up of simple body work (basic intersected volumes) the car is easily produced and accessible to everyone but most of all, it's fun to drive.

Digital Displacement points out that it probably didn't hurt that the concept car comes with an Xbox 360 built into the dash. Brian Crecente

Winner of the Pug in PGR4 Contest [Digital Displacement]

Earlier, we reported that French car maker Peugeot let it slip that there was going to be a Project Gotham Racing 4. The surprising bit wasn't that there's gonna be a PGR 4 (duh), but that Peugeot had presumably announced this via a design competition on its website. The winner's design would appear in the yet-unreveiled Project Gotham Racing game.

The auto company's site has been now wiped clean of any mention to PGR 4, instead saying that the contest winner's design will appear in an Xbox 360 game. End point. A tipster also sends word that sponsors for the contest have been sent the following email:

Dear Partner,

Could you please modify the information on your web site. The idea is to delete all information relative to the Project Gotham Racing 4 video game.

Many thanks

Funny, I would've thought the idea was to never mention the game in the first place. And covering it up? Well. Brian Ashcraft

Just an "Xbox 360 Game" [Peugeot] Thanks, Ociotakus!

What. A. Surprise. Bizarre Creations is making Project Gotham Racing 4 according to of all people, car manufacturer Peugeot's website. It is currently running a concept car design competion, stating:

The winning concept car will be included by Microsoft in the Project Gotham Racing 4 game, exclusively on Xbox 360 that will be released towards the end of 2007 or first half of 2008.

The previous title was a hit on the Xbox 360, and this latest incarnation will most likely be as well. Expect obvious follow-ups like PGR 5 and PGR 6. Guess the real news bit here is that viral marketing now includes using an European car company to "leak" game info. Brian Ashcraft

More Here [Peugot] via Games Industry