Retro Game Walkthroughs for Project Gotham Racing 3 (Xbox 360)
Submitted By: Ashman
The Complete Project Gotham Racing 3 Achievements Guide
Stuck for the Style badge? Can’t make Rank 1? Achievements glitching out and not being awarded to you? Look no further. This is the complete guide to unlocking all the achievements on Project Gotham Racing 3. Follow the instructions and some of the more difficult achievements on this game (particularly the much sought after Style Racer Badge) become easy.
At the time of writing, April 22nd 2006, there are 21 achievements and 950 gamerpoints on offer in this game. This is after the April update that saw the addition of the “Tournament Qualifier” achievement, worth 50 gamerpoints. So here is the all-important list of achievements, listed in order of difficulty, and how to get them:
STEEL CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 30
Difficulty: 1/5
Gain at least steel medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. You do not have to get the steel medal for every track if you have completed them at a higher difficulty already.
RANK 10
Gamerpoints: 20
Difficulty: 1/5
All you really need to do to get this one is play Solo Career. Normally unlocked after the completion of your first race in Solo Career.
ARCADE PLAYER
Gamerpoints: 15
Difficulty: 1/5
Play the two arcade games in one of your garages in Solo Career. You don’t need to complete to game or get a high score, you can simply shoot a few shots and leave.
PHOTOGRAPHER
Gamerpoints: 10
Difficulty: 1/5
Take and save at least one photograph in each city. This can be done by pausing during a race and selecting the corresponding option on the menu.
TRACK BUILDER
Gamerpoints: 10
Difficulty: 1/5
Build and save 10 custom tracks by selecting Route Creator from the Playtime menu.
GOTHAM TV SPORTS FAN
Gamerpoints: 15
Difficulty: 1/5
This is an annoying achievement to get not because its difficult but because there have been several glitches with it. I managed to do so without too much hassle. Firstly, save a replay of a race. Once this is done go to Gotham TV and watch 10 races on the Gotham Heroes channel. Many claim you only need to watch half of a race, but it is best just to leave your 360 running because, after one race finishes, another always starts and you are whisked away to watch that one. After leaving your 360 running through 10 races, sign back into your profile and you should get the achievement.
BRONZE CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty: 2/5
Gain at least bronze medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. You do not have to get the bronze medal for every track if you have completed them at a higher difficulty already.
RANK 5
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty: 2/5
To become a Rank 5 you must gain 160,000 kudos points ore more over the course of your solo career. It can normally be easily acquired by simply playing the solo career as you would, but if you find yourself a little short, just repeat some cone challenges a few times over and over and you should net yourself 5,000 – 15,000 points for each one.
RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty: 2/5
This isn’t really a difficult achievement to unlock, but it is time consuming. Select Race Against The Clock from the Playtime menu and set a lap time for every track in every city (not including your custom tracks) to get the achievement. You don’t need to break any records to get it.
LAMBORGHINI OWNERS CLUB
Gamerpoints: 45
Difficulty 2/5
Buy all the Lamborghini cars in the game. The simplest way to do this is, once you’ve amounted a nice amount of cash, go to the Buy A New Car menu and press R Trigger to browse by manufacturer. You can then simply buy each Lambo one after the other all at once. You are allowed to sell the cars after receiving the achievement.
FERRARI OWNERS CLUB
Gamerpoints: 45
Difficulty 2/5
Buy all the Ferrari cars in the game. The simplest way to do this is, once you’ve amounted a nice amount of cash, go to the Buy A New Car menu and press R Trigger to browse by manufacturer. You can then simply buy each Ferrari one after the other all at once. You are allowed to sell the cars after receiving the achievement.
EXOTIC CAR CLUB
Gamerpoints: 45
Difficulty 2/5
Unlike the Lambo and Ferrari owner’s club achievements, for this one you need to unlock cars from different manufacturers. They are: McLaren F1 LM, Shelby GT 500, Ford GT-40 MK 1, Corvette ZR1, TVR Cerbera Speed Twelve, RUF CTR "Yellow Bird", Callaway Sledgehammer Twin Turbo. Some of these cars may need to be unlocked by acquiring a certain amount of Kudos points in Solo Career. You are allowed to sell the cars after receiving the achievement.
SILVER CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 60
Difficulty: 3/5
Gain at least silver medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. You do not have to get the silver medal for every track if you have completed them at a higher difficulty already.
PRO RACER BADGE
Gamerpoints: 60
Difficulty: 3/5
To get this one you need to earn a platinum medal using manual transmission in Solo Career. You can change from automatic to manual transmission in the options. It doesn’t sound easy at all – in fact it sounds very difficult, but playing on the right championship, with the right car, makes all the difference. Firstly, make sure you have the Ferrari F50 GT and select the Speed Challenge from the second cup – Whitehall Walk Style Cup. Take the corners as you would and use B and Y to toggle up and down gears when appropriate. Exceed the generous target of 129.5mph and the achievement is yours.
GOTHAM HERO
Gamerpoints: 30
Difficulty: 3/5
To get this achievement you need to be featured on Gotham TV. You should get this one providing you play the Online Career a fair amount. You should, at some point, get a message saying you’re being featured on Gotham TV when entering a race, and will receive the achievement. Play through the race, it doesn’t matter where you finish, and its yours. Ways to improve your chances of being featured are to play at a time not many others will be online, for instance early in the morning or late at night. Also, from what I can tell races featuring Class A cars are more frequently shown on Gotham TV.
GOLD CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 75
Difficulty: 4/5
Gain at least gold medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. You do not have to get the gold medal for every track if you have completed them at Platinum difficulty already. If you’re finding a particular level hard, I suggest making sure you keep using the same car and practising and practising until you finally pass. Don’t be afraid to use restarts if you mess up during a race.
RANK 1
Gamerpoints: 80
Difficulty: 4/5
To become a Rank 5 you must gain 390,000 kudos points or more over the course of your solo career. This will take a considerable amount of time, and if you find yourself short repeat the cone challenges over and over and you should net yourself 5,000 – 15,000 points for each repetition providing you finish the race.
STYLE RACER BADGE
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty: 4/5
There is a hard and easy part to this achievement. The easy part begins with it’s first four objectives: get a 25m powerslide, 10x combo, 1,000 kudos in one race, and 25,000 kudos online. Providing you’ve played through the Solo Career plenty (particularly the cone challenges) and Online for the 25,000 kudos online, you should have this part of the achievement with too many problems. You can check that you’ve done these by looking at your Badges in the Achievements menu.
The hard part is the last requirement of the achievement: Kudos for every manoeuvre, and the developers did not make it clear what you needed to do to achieve this. Basically, you need to complete a certain amount of kudos-bearing tricks and slides in a race, and win it. Unless you know which course and car to use, this can be extremely hard. Anyway, follow my instructions correctly and in a few tries you should make this no problem.
Firstly, select the very last race in Solo Career on the easiest, Steel difficulty. It’s an eliminator race on the Nurburgring. Choose the Ferrari F50 GT from Class A as your car. The race will start and your opponents will be hideously slow. Even so, let them take the lead ahead of you for about 20 seconds. After you’ve done this, hurtle through the first, tight bend and instead of going round the outside, work yourself an angle to hit the lumpy bit in the track and you should get yourself either the Air or Two Wheels kudos points. After this there are a couple of other corners, one being a chicane which you, again, can use to try and get the Air or Two Wheels bonus – instead of veering off and following the track attempt to go straight over it, but don’t crash or your entire race is ruined – you must get the clean race bonus.
Once you have these two you need to overtake the rest of the cars (you let them ahead of you so you could get the overtake bonus), which is extremely easy, and get the following drift manoeuvres, which shouldn’t be too much trouble either. Follow the explanations of how to do each one below:
Drift – self explanatory
Braking Drift – pick up some speed and use the brakes to slide
E-Brake Slide – pick up some speed and use the handbrakes to slide
Feint Drift – when approaching a corner, turn in the opposite direction for a second and then move the stick back the other way and force it into a smooth slide
Power Over – use excessive acceleration through a corner to break into a slide, it doesn’t matter if you come off the road just don’t hit the walls
Power Feint – basically do a feint drift but use the excessive acceleration you would in the power over to get this
Braking Feint – the same, except have more speed going into the corner, turn slightly one way, and then slam on the breaks going in the other direction – this can be tricky
Braking Power Over – get up a load of speed going into a corner, stop accelerating just before it for a second, and only then slam on the brakes and move your car through the corner
Pause your game if you’re unsure which ones you’ve done and if you keep missing one manoeuvre, try and get that one first before performing the others. It isn’t as hard as it sounds at all. Remember you must win the race without hitting any walls once you have all the manoeuvres completed, but this isn’t difficult due to the low standard of the competition.
ONLINE PROFESSIONAL
Gamerpoints: 60
Difficulty: 4/5
This previously glitched achievement, that was impossible to unlock, was fixed by the latest patch. It’s a toughie if you come up against good competition online. If you play online a lot, you should get this sooner or later. Firstly, you need to equate 50 races online in Online Career – races completed online in Playtime mode don’t count. Secondly, you need to finish first in a race you start last on the starting grid in – a strange achievement, but again, if you play online enough you should get it. Try competing in races with fewer competitors if you have any trouble getting this. You also need a 3-event win streak, meaning that in you need to win any three events back to back. A good tip for doing this is to keep choosing head-to-heads as you have more likelihood of winning. You also need a clean online race – no contact with other cars or barriers to get this – just be ultra careful. Finally, you need to complete all of the online scenarios to complete this badge entirely. This means winning each of the eight Online Career championships at least once. Play online enough and this isn’t much of a problem. As with the Style Racer Badge, you can check which objectives you have completed by selecting Achievements and then Badges from the main menu.
PLATINUM CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 100
Difficulty: 5/5
The most time consuming and touch achievement there is, but also the most rewarding. You need to gain all platinum medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. If you’re finding a particular level hard, I suggest making sure you keep using the same car and practising and practising until you finally pass. Don’t be afraid to use restarts if you mess up during a race. This can be tough particularly for the cone challenges – its important that you link ALL your combos together and finish the race, you can’t afford a break in your combos. If you’re missing some challenges on races, all I can suggest is that you consider using a ghost of somebody on the online leaderboards that has done exceptionally well. Good luck, you’ll need it.
TOURNAMENT QUALIFIER
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty 5/5
There’s no two ways about it – you need to be really, really good at the game to do this. Select the Tournament option from the Gotham Career menu and you’ll have options to qualify for Official regional tournaments. Qualifying entails the completion of one lap on a supplied car and track in the quickest time possible. Your time needs to be one of the 64 fastest in that tournament’s qualifying to move onto the elimination stages, and therefore receive the achievement. There’s not much I can say about this because the tournaments change all the time, as do the races and cars given to qualify. You are racing against the very best in the world, and you if you do manage to qualify, you can be very, very proud of yourself.
And there you have it. A detailed run-through of all the 21 achievements and 950 gamerpoints on offer in Project Gotham Racing 3. As you can see from this walkthrough, so many of the achievements look much harder than they are. Many, in fact, are very easy providing you know what to do.
Good luck, fellow achievement-freaks.
Stuck for the Style badge? Can’t make Rank 1? Achievements glitching out and not being awarded to you? Look no further. This is the complete guide to unlocking all the achievements on Project Gotham Racing 3. Follow the instructions and some of the more difficult achievements on this game (particularly the much sought after Style Racer Badge) become easy.
At the time of writing, April 22nd 2006, there are 21 achievements and 950 gamerpoints on offer in this game. This is after the April update that saw the addition of the “Tournament Qualifier” achievement, worth 50 gamerpoints. So here is the all-important list of achievements, listed in order of difficulty, and how to get them:
STEEL CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 30
Difficulty: 1/5
Gain at least steel medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. You do not have to get the steel medal for every track if you have completed them at a higher difficulty already.
RANK 10
Gamerpoints: 20
Difficulty: 1/5
All you really need to do to get this one is play Solo Career. Normally unlocked after the completion of your first race in Solo Career.
ARCADE PLAYER
Gamerpoints: 15
Difficulty: 1/5
Play the two arcade games in one of your garages in Solo Career. You don’t need to complete to game or get a high score, you can simply shoot a few shots and leave.
PHOTOGRAPHER
Gamerpoints: 10
Difficulty: 1/5
Take and save at least one photograph in each city. This can be done by pausing during a race and selecting the corresponding option on the menu.
TRACK BUILDER
Gamerpoints: 10
Difficulty: 1/5
Build and save 10 custom tracks by selecting Route Creator from the Playtime menu.
GOTHAM TV SPORTS FAN
Gamerpoints: 15
Difficulty: 1/5
This is an annoying achievement to get not because its difficult but because there have been several glitches with it. I managed to do so without too much hassle. Firstly, save a replay of a race. Once this is done go to Gotham TV and watch 10 races on the Gotham Heroes channel. Many claim you only need to watch half of a race, but it is best just to leave your 360 running because, after one race finishes, another always starts and you are whisked away to watch that one. After leaving your 360 running through 10 races, sign back into your profile and you should get the achievement.
BRONZE CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty: 2/5
Gain at least bronze medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. You do not have to get the bronze medal for every track if you have completed them at a higher difficulty already.
RANK 5
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty: 2/5
To become a Rank 5 you must gain 160,000 kudos points ore more over the course of your solo career. It can normally be easily acquired by simply playing the solo career as you would, but if you find yourself a little short, just repeat some cone challenges a few times over and over and you should net yourself 5,000 – 15,000 points for each one.
RACE AGAINST THE CLOCK
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty: 2/5
This isn’t really a difficult achievement to unlock, but it is time consuming. Select Race Against The Clock from the Playtime menu and set a lap time for every track in every city (not including your custom tracks) to get the achievement. You don’t need to break any records to get it.
LAMBORGHINI OWNERS CLUB
Gamerpoints: 45
Difficulty 2/5
Buy all the Lamborghini cars in the game. The simplest way to do this is, once you’ve amounted a nice amount of cash, go to the Buy A New Car menu and press R Trigger to browse by manufacturer. You can then simply buy each Lambo one after the other all at once. You are allowed to sell the cars after receiving the achievement.
FERRARI OWNERS CLUB
Gamerpoints: 45
Difficulty 2/5
Buy all the Ferrari cars in the game. The simplest way to do this is, once you’ve amounted a nice amount of cash, go to the Buy A New Car menu and press R Trigger to browse by manufacturer. You can then simply buy each Ferrari one after the other all at once. You are allowed to sell the cars after receiving the achievement.
EXOTIC CAR CLUB
Gamerpoints: 45
Difficulty 2/5
Unlike the Lambo and Ferrari owner’s club achievements, for this one you need to unlock cars from different manufacturers. They are: McLaren F1 LM, Shelby GT 500, Ford GT-40 MK 1, Corvette ZR1, TVR Cerbera Speed Twelve, RUF CTR "Yellow Bird", Callaway Sledgehammer Twin Turbo. Some of these cars may need to be unlocked by acquiring a certain amount of Kudos points in Solo Career. You are allowed to sell the cars after receiving the achievement.
SILVER CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 60
Difficulty: 3/5
Gain at least silver medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. You do not have to get the silver medal for every track if you have completed them at a higher difficulty already.
PRO RACER BADGE
Gamerpoints: 60
Difficulty: 3/5
To get this one you need to earn a platinum medal using manual transmission in Solo Career. You can change from automatic to manual transmission in the options. It doesn’t sound easy at all – in fact it sounds very difficult, but playing on the right championship, with the right car, makes all the difference. Firstly, make sure you have the Ferrari F50 GT and select the Speed Challenge from the second cup – Whitehall Walk Style Cup. Take the corners as you would and use B and Y to toggle up and down gears when appropriate. Exceed the generous target of 129.5mph and the achievement is yours.
GOTHAM HERO
Gamerpoints: 30
Difficulty: 3/5
To get this achievement you need to be featured on Gotham TV. You should get this one providing you play the Online Career a fair amount. You should, at some point, get a message saying you’re being featured on Gotham TV when entering a race, and will receive the achievement. Play through the race, it doesn’t matter where you finish, and its yours. Ways to improve your chances of being featured are to play at a time not many others will be online, for instance early in the morning or late at night. Also, from what I can tell races featuring Class A cars are more frequently shown on Gotham TV.
GOLD CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 75
Difficulty: 4/5
Gain at least gold medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. You do not have to get the gold medal for every track if you have completed them at Platinum difficulty already. If you’re finding a particular level hard, I suggest making sure you keep using the same car and practising and practising until you finally pass. Don’t be afraid to use restarts if you mess up during a race.
RANK 1
Gamerpoints: 80
Difficulty: 4/5
To become a Rank 5 you must gain 390,000 kudos points or more over the course of your solo career. This will take a considerable amount of time, and if you find yourself short repeat the cone challenges over and over and you should net yourself 5,000 – 15,000 points for each repetition providing you finish the race.
STYLE RACER BADGE
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty: 4/5
There is a hard and easy part to this achievement. The easy part begins with it’s first four objectives: get a 25m powerslide, 10x combo, 1,000 kudos in one race, and 25,000 kudos online. Providing you’ve played through the Solo Career plenty (particularly the cone challenges) and Online for the 25,000 kudos online, you should have this part of the achievement with too many problems. You can check that you’ve done these by looking at your Badges in the Achievements menu.
The hard part is the last requirement of the achievement: Kudos for every manoeuvre, and the developers did not make it clear what you needed to do to achieve this. Basically, you need to complete a certain amount of kudos-bearing tricks and slides in a race, and win it. Unless you know which course and car to use, this can be extremely hard. Anyway, follow my instructions correctly and in a few tries you should make this no problem.
Firstly, select the very last race in Solo Career on the easiest, Steel difficulty. It’s an eliminator race on the Nurburgring. Choose the Ferrari F50 GT from Class A as your car. The race will start and your opponents will be hideously slow. Even so, let them take the lead ahead of you for about 20 seconds. After you’ve done this, hurtle through the first, tight bend and instead of going round the outside, work yourself an angle to hit the lumpy bit in the track and you should get yourself either the Air or Two Wheels kudos points. After this there are a couple of other corners, one being a chicane which you, again, can use to try and get the Air or Two Wheels bonus – instead of veering off and following the track attempt to go straight over it, but don’t crash or your entire race is ruined – you must get the clean race bonus.
Once you have these two you need to overtake the rest of the cars (you let them ahead of you so you could get the overtake bonus), which is extremely easy, and get the following drift manoeuvres, which shouldn’t be too much trouble either. Follow the explanations of how to do each one below:
Drift – self explanatory
Braking Drift – pick up some speed and use the brakes to slide
E-Brake Slide – pick up some speed and use the handbrakes to slide
Feint Drift – when approaching a corner, turn in the opposite direction for a second and then move the stick back the other way and force it into a smooth slide
Power Over – use excessive acceleration through a corner to break into a slide, it doesn’t matter if you come off the road just don’t hit the walls
Power Feint – basically do a feint drift but use the excessive acceleration you would in the power over to get this
Braking Feint – the same, except have more speed going into the corner, turn slightly one way, and then slam on the breaks going in the other direction – this can be tricky
Braking Power Over – get up a load of speed going into a corner, stop accelerating just before it for a second, and only then slam on the brakes and move your car through the corner
Pause your game if you’re unsure which ones you’ve done and if you keep missing one manoeuvre, try and get that one first before performing the others. It isn’t as hard as it sounds at all. Remember you must win the race without hitting any walls once you have all the manoeuvres completed, but this isn’t difficult due to the low standard of the competition.
ONLINE PROFESSIONAL
Gamerpoints: 60
Difficulty: 4/5
This previously glitched achievement, that was impossible to unlock, was fixed by the latest patch. It’s a toughie if you come up against good competition online. If you play online a lot, you should get this sooner or later. Firstly, you need to equate 50 races online in Online Career – races completed online in Playtime mode don’t count. Secondly, you need to finish first in a race you start last on the starting grid in – a strange achievement, but again, if you play online enough you should get it. Try competing in races with fewer competitors if you have any trouble getting this. You also need a 3-event win streak, meaning that in you need to win any three events back to back. A good tip for doing this is to keep choosing head-to-heads as you have more likelihood of winning. You also need a clean online race – no contact with other cars or barriers to get this – just be ultra careful. Finally, you need to complete all of the online scenarios to complete this badge entirely. This means winning each of the eight Online Career championships at least once. Play online enough and this isn’t much of a problem. As with the Style Racer Badge, you can check which objectives you have completed by selecting Achievements and then Badges from the main menu.
PLATINUM CHAMPION
Gamerpoints: 100
Difficulty: 5/5
The most time consuming and touch achievement there is, but also the most rewarding. You need to gain all platinum medals for all the championships in Solo Career (does not include online) to get this one. If you’re finding a particular level hard, I suggest making sure you keep using the same car and practising and practising until you finally pass. Don’t be afraid to use restarts if you mess up during a race. This can be tough particularly for the cone challenges – its important that you link ALL your combos together and finish the race, you can’t afford a break in your combos. If you’re missing some challenges on races, all I can suggest is that you consider using a ghost of somebody on the online leaderboards that has done exceptionally well. Good luck, you’ll need it.
TOURNAMENT QUALIFIER
Gamerpoints: 50
Difficulty 5/5
There’s no two ways about it – you need to be really, really good at the game to do this. Select the Tournament option from the Gotham Career menu and you’ll have options to qualify for Official regional tournaments. Qualifying entails the completion of one lap on a supplied car and track in the quickest time possible. Your time needs to be one of the 64 fastest in that tournament’s qualifying to move onto the elimination stages, and therefore receive the achievement. There’s not much I can say about this because the tournaments change all the time, as do the races and cars given to qualify. You are racing against the very best in the world, and you if you do manage to qualify, you can be very, very proud of yourself.
And there you have it. A detailed run-through of all the 21 achievements and 950 gamerpoints on offer in Project Gotham Racing 3. As you can see from this walkthrough, so many of the achievements look much harder than they are. Many, in fact, are very easy providing you know what to do.
Good luck, fellow achievement-freaks.
Submitted By: AliBoy
A quick guide to help you get started on Project Gotham Racing 3 on the Xbox 360.
Controls
Left Stick – Steer the vehicle
Right stick – change your camera angles/ looks around car
RT – Accelerate
LT – Brake / Reverse
LB – Change camera
RB – Toggle driver names on/off
Y – Look behind
X – Shift down a gear / reverse
B – Shift up a gear
A – e-brake (hand brake)
Kudos Points
kudos points are awarded in the game for various things such as performing a stylish manoeuvre or linking together a combination of moves. Moves such as overtaking, going up onto two wheels, hand brake slides, power slides and full 360 degree turns will reward you with kudos points. These points can then be used to unlock additional cars later in the game. You can obtain more kudos points in each race by combining moves together.
Race Types
Hot Lap: With this race type you race in a single lap with the aim to finish the lap within the specified time limit.
Timed Run: With this race type you must race through the course before the time runs out.
Breakthrough: Here you must race through a series of checkpoints which will add on additional time to the clock. You have to complete the course before the time runs out.
Time Vs kudos: You must complete the course before the time runs out. You can also stop the clock at times by performing moves that will earn you kudos points.
Street Race: Race against opponents while trying to achieve the appropriate target position.
One on one: Race against a single opponent and be the first to cross the finish line.
Eliminator: Race against a group of opponents. At the end of each lap the car in last place is eliminated. The aim is to win the race and not get eliminated.
Cone Challenge: Here you must navigate through a series of cones within a specified time limit – you have to earn a certain number of kudos points to complete the race. You lose your kudos points if you crash or make contact with any of the gates.
Drift Challenge: You have to earn over the required number of kudos points by doing drifts within the set time limit.
Overtake Challenge: Here you have to overtake the specified number of cars within the time limit.
Speed Challenge: Here you have to drive past the speed camera travelling faster than the required speed.
Cars
There is a whole range of cars ranging from top of the range Ferrari's to concept super cars, I'll not bore you with the pros and cons of each car though. I will however recommend a few cars to help get you started.
The Ultima GTR is a great car to get started with as its great to control and also quite fast – will certainly get you through the steel and bronze levels. It is also particularly useful for the time Vs kudos, drift and cone challenges as it is much easier to control that most of the other cars allowing you to link together series of moves and obtain loads of kudos points.
In some of the harder levels you'll probably need a faster car, the enzo Ferrari is good for this, if you really want to master the game you'll have to get used to the controls of the F50 GT. I also found the Ferrari 288 GTO useful for some of the harder levels as it was fast but also a bit easier to control than some of the more powerful cars.
Getting Started
The key to winning each race is working out just how your chosen car handles and getting to know the tracks, if you can work out how late you can break to still allow you to drift safely round a corner and accelerate away then it is simple enough to keep ahead of the other racers or beat the clock.
It is also useful to work out the best places to perform kudos moves, which parts of the track are wide enough to perform huge drifts and slides is particularly useful.
Tracks
The tracks in the game all come from specific locations: London, Las Vegas, New York, Tokyo and the Nurburgring.
Once you play through a few tracks from each location you will notice certain parts are repeated for different tracks and circuits. You should be able to quickly learn the trickiest parts of each location and the parts when you can travel at top speed etc.
Online Play
Racing online is a little different. You are no longer playing against AI controlled racers – now you are up against real people with different levels of skills and most importantly different tactics. You'll find some players will play fair and let you overtake if you are screaming past and not try barge you around. Others will make efforts to ram you off the track at any given opportunity.
So you may have to focus more on what is going on around you and not just on what you are going to do yourself.
Achievements
The following is the list of achievements in the game and how to unlock them:
Arcade Player - Play Geometry Wars 1 and 2 in the garage (15 Gamerpoints)
Steel Champion - Complete all championships at Steel level (30 GamerPoints)
Bronze Champion - Complete all championships at Bronze level (50 GamerPoints)
Silver Champion - Complete all championships at Silver level (60 GamerPoints)
Gold Champion - Complete all championships at Gold level (75 GamerPoints)
Platinum Champion - Complete all championships at Platinum level (100 GamerPoints)
Rank 10 - Get to Rank 10 in single player mode (20 GamerPoints)
Rank 5 - Get to Rank 5 in single player mode (50 GamerPoints)
Rank 1 - Get to Rank 1 in single player mode(80 GamerPoints)
Gotham Hero - Be featured on Gotham TV (30 GamerPoints)
Gotham TV Sports Fan - Watch Gotham TV 10 times and also save a Replay of a race (15 GamerPoints)
Track Builder - Create and save 10 Custom Routes (10 GamerPoints)
Photographer - Take and save a picture in each of the different cities (10 GamerPoints)
Ferrari Owners Club - Buy all the Ferrari cars (45 GamerPoints)
Lamborghini Owners Club - Buy all the Lamborghini Cars (45 GamerPoints)
Exotic Car Club - Buy the following cars: McLaren F1 LM; Shelby GT 500; Ford GT-40 MK 1; Corvette ZR1; TVR Cerbera Speed Twelve; RUF CTR "Yellow Bird"; Callaway Sledgehammer Twin Turbo (45 GamerPoints)
Race Against The Clock - Set a lap time for every circuit in Race Against The Clock mode (50 GamerPoints)
Style Racer Badge - 25m powerslide; 10x Combo; 25k Online Kudos; 1k Kudos in a race; Kudos for every maneouvre (50 GamerPoints)
Pro Racer Badge - Earn a Platinum medal using manual transmission (60 GamerPoints)
Online Professional – Take part in 50 online races; start last/finish first; 3-event win streak; clean race; win each scenario (60 GamerPoints)
Unlock able Cars
The following is the list of hidden cars that can be unlocked by earning the required amount of kudos points in single player mode:
Cadillac Concept - 90,000K - Cadillac Sixteen
Ford Concept - 10,000K - Ford Mustang GT-R Concept
Ford Concept - 120,000K - Ford Supercar Concept Indigo
Ford Concept - 160,000K - Ford Shelby GR-1
Ford Concept - 300,000K - Ford GT90 Concept
Ford Concept - 390,000K - Ford Shelby Cobra
Nissan Concept - 50,000K - Nissan GT-R Proto
RUF Concept - 475,000K - RUF R50
Toyota Concept - 230,000K - Toyota GT-One
Play geometry Wars 1 & 2
Go to view cars, then choose to walk around in your garage. If you look around most of the garages you will see two arcade games set up, called Geometry Wars 1 and 2. By walking close to each and pressing A you are able to play full versions of both these games.
Playing your own music
It is possible to play your own music through the 360 while playing the game. Just press the guide button during the game and then use the music player to play the required songs you have stored on your hard drive.
Controls
Left Stick – Steer the vehicle
Right stick – change your camera angles/ looks around car
RT – Accelerate
LT – Brake / Reverse
LB – Change camera
RB – Toggle driver names on/off
Y – Look behind
X – Shift down a gear / reverse
B – Shift up a gear
A – e-brake (hand brake)
Kudos Points
kudos points are awarded in the game for various things such as performing a stylish manoeuvre or linking together a combination of moves. Moves such as overtaking, going up onto two wheels, hand brake slides, power slides and full 360 degree turns will reward you with kudos points. These points can then be used to unlock additional cars later in the game. You can obtain more kudos points in each race by combining moves together.
Race Types
Hot Lap: With this race type you race in a single lap with the aim to finish the lap within the specified time limit.
Timed Run: With this race type you must race through the course before the time runs out.
Breakthrough: Here you must race through a series of checkpoints which will add on additional time to the clock. You have to complete the course before the time runs out.
Time Vs kudos: You must complete the course before the time runs out. You can also stop the clock at times by performing moves that will earn you kudos points.
Street Race: Race against opponents while trying to achieve the appropriate target position.
One on one: Race against a single opponent and be the first to cross the finish line.
Eliminator: Race against a group of opponents. At the end of each lap the car in last place is eliminated. The aim is to win the race and not get eliminated.
Cone Challenge: Here you must navigate through a series of cones within a specified time limit – you have to earn a certain number of kudos points to complete the race. You lose your kudos points if you crash or make contact with any of the gates.
Drift Challenge: You have to earn over the required number of kudos points by doing drifts within the set time limit.
Overtake Challenge: Here you have to overtake the specified number of cars within the time limit.
Speed Challenge: Here you have to drive past the speed camera travelling faster than the required speed.
Cars
There is a whole range of cars ranging from top of the range Ferrari's to concept super cars, I'll not bore you with the pros and cons of each car though. I will however recommend a few cars to help get you started.
The Ultima GTR is a great car to get started with as its great to control and also quite fast – will certainly get you through the steel and bronze levels. It is also particularly useful for the time Vs kudos, drift and cone challenges as it is much easier to control that most of the other cars allowing you to link together series of moves and obtain loads of kudos points.
In some of the harder levels you'll probably need a faster car, the enzo Ferrari is good for this, if you really want to master the game you'll have to get used to the controls of the F50 GT. I also found the Ferrari 288 GTO useful for some of the harder levels as it was fast but also a bit easier to control than some of the more powerful cars.
Getting Started
The key to winning each race is working out just how your chosen car handles and getting to know the tracks, if you can work out how late you can break to still allow you to drift safely round a corner and accelerate away then it is simple enough to keep ahead of the other racers or beat the clock.
It is also useful to work out the best places to perform kudos moves, which parts of the track are wide enough to perform huge drifts and slides is particularly useful.
Tracks
The tracks in the game all come from specific locations: London, Las Vegas, New York, Tokyo and the Nurburgring.
Once you play through a few tracks from each location you will notice certain parts are repeated for different tracks and circuits. You should be able to quickly learn the trickiest parts of each location and the parts when you can travel at top speed etc.
Online Play
Racing online is a little different. You are no longer playing against AI controlled racers – now you are up against real people with different levels of skills and most importantly different tactics. You'll find some players will play fair and let you overtake if you are screaming past and not try barge you around. Others will make efforts to ram you off the track at any given opportunity.
So you may have to focus more on what is going on around you and not just on what you are going to do yourself.
Achievements
The following is the list of achievements in the game and how to unlock them:
Arcade Player - Play Geometry Wars 1 and 2 in the garage (15 Gamerpoints)
Steel Champion - Complete all championships at Steel level (30 GamerPoints)
Bronze Champion - Complete all championships at Bronze level (50 GamerPoints)
Silver Champion - Complete all championships at Silver level (60 GamerPoints)
Gold Champion - Complete all championships at Gold level (75 GamerPoints)
Platinum Champion - Complete all championships at Platinum level (100 GamerPoints)
Rank 10 - Get to Rank 10 in single player mode (20 GamerPoints)
Rank 5 - Get to Rank 5 in single player mode (50 GamerPoints)
Rank 1 - Get to Rank 1 in single player mode(80 GamerPoints)
Gotham Hero - Be featured on Gotham TV (30 GamerPoints)
Gotham TV Sports Fan - Watch Gotham TV 10 times and also save a Replay of a race (15 GamerPoints)
Track Builder - Create and save 10 Custom Routes (10 GamerPoints)
Photographer - Take and save a picture in each of the different cities (10 GamerPoints)
Ferrari Owners Club - Buy all the Ferrari cars (45 GamerPoints)
Lamborghini Owners Club - Buy all the Lamborghini Cars (45 GamerPoints)
Exotic Car Club - Buy the following cars: McLaren F1 LM; Shelby GT 500; Ford GT-40 MK 1; Corvette ZR1; TVR Cerbera Speed Twelve; RUF CTR "Yellow Bird"; Callaway Sledgehammer Twin Turbo (45 GamerPoints)
Race Against The Clock - Set a lap time for every circuit in Race Against The Clock mode (50 GamerPoints)
Style Racer Badge - 25m powerslide; 10x Combo; 25k Online Kudos; 1k Kudos in a race; Kudos for every maneouvre (50 GamerPoints)
Pro Racer Badge - Earn a Platinum medal using manual transmission (60 GamerPoints)
Online Professional – Take part in 50 online races; start last/finish first; 3-event win streak; clean race; win each scenario (60 GamerPoints)
Unlock able Cars
The following is the list of hidden cars that can be unlocked by earning the required amount of kudos points in single player mode:
Cadillac Concept - 90,000K - Cadillac Sixteen
Ford Concept - 10,000K - Ford Mustang GT-R Concept
Ford Concept - 120,000K - Ford Supercar Concept Indigo
Ford Concept - 160,000K - Ford Shelby GR-1
Ford Concept - 300,000K - Ford GT90 Concept
Ford Concept - 390,000K - Ford Shelby Cobra
Nissan Concept - 50,000K - Nissan GT-R Proto
RUF Concept - 475,000K - RUF R50
Toyota Concept - 230,000K - Toyota GT-One
Play geometry Wars 1 & 2
Go to view cars, then choose to walk around in your garage. If you look around most of the garages you will see two arcade games set up, called Geometry Wars 1 and 2. By walking close to each and pressing A you are able to play full versions of both these games.
Playing your own music
It is possible to play your own music through the 360 while playing the game. Just press the guide button during the game and then use the music player to play the required songs you have stored on your hard drive.