more PGR baybeeee

I'd honestly put it on-par with the first game as both this and 1 kinda have their own ups and downs. This game does run at 30 FPS rather than 1s 60 and it is a bit apparent for a racing game like this, unfortunately. The overall progression is better paced than the first games mid-game wall, but also can kinda feel a bit boring as you really have to challenge yourself by picking higher difficulties, and kudos don't really matter AS much here than in the first. PGR but more streamlined. The OST is also a lot larger here than in PGR1 but also because of that I felt like the songs didn't stick with me as much as game 1s songs, for better or for worse. Again nothing really significantly better or significantly worse between the two games, just different.

The gameplay is the same extremely solid and fun racing that I expect from this series, everything has just the right amount of weight, and going fast feels really good. The lack of emphasis on kudos earning to complete missions makes this much more of a pure racing game. They bumped the city count from the four games in the first to a staggering eleven this time around, with two bonus cities as DLC. There are also a significantly larger amount of events to go through here, so they really turbo-charged the content here.

The real star of the show here is the online support. Shoutouts to insignia for bringing the online functions of this game back up, because I genuinely can't imagine playing this without them. Everything is tracked in their own individual leaderboards, and the kudos system quantifying your driving skill means that throughout the entire game you are constantly being shown your skill relative to the rest of the world, and that plus the general small size of the insignia community means that it's extremely motivating to try things again to get better scores and rise up on the leaderboards. Whereas the kudos are a bit downplayed in the singleplayer progression, they are the crux of the multiplayer, which is awesome. The online racing itself is incredibly full-featured as well, as you can drive any track using any class of car with your friends, and it's fun as all hell. The netcode is honestly really great, as I have mostly played with people from Europe whereas I am in California with little to no issues at all, and the lobby system has tons of QOL to it that a lot of other racing games even today don't even have.

Overall it's the same great gameplay of PGR but with a crapton of content presented in a different, fresh way. Probably one of the best racing games on the system (i still haven't played forza 1), and an ABSOLUTE must-own if you are an insignia user or plan to be one.

(oh yeah geometry wars is such a sick bonus minigame to hide in here too, can't forget about that either)

BACK WHEN YOU JUST PLAYED GAME AND HAD FUN NUFF SAID

STILL FUN NUFF SAID

FUCK SONY NUFF SAID