Studio Update 30

PGR4 says hi!

Wednesday, September 05 2007

So Bizarre is a crazy place to be right now. PGR4 is on the brink of release, which subsequently means that for some people their work here is done. Many of the team are enjoying some well earned time off, but it's bittersweet as they're also on-call should they be needed back at the studio.

For those of us still here at Bizarre (which is the majority in truth), it's a mad dash to get everything finished, screenshots taken, artwork finalised, etc. etc. Our production team are supervising the certification process at MGS, which is pretty much the last step required before the game "goes gold" and heads off to manufacturing. Needless to say we all want the game to go through cert first time and with flying colours, but if anything is wrong we are still all on hand to sort it out and get it packaged up again for the next attempt.

Regardless of all this certification tomfoolery, you'll be able to pick up the game on 2nd October in the United States, or the 12th October in Europe. In fact, that really deserves to be in larger text...

US: October 2nd
Europe: October 12th

Got it? Please note: I shall be on Xbox Live to dispatch ass-kickings on approximately 13th October.

Anyway, stepping back a moment I thought I'd update you all on what we've been up to recently. There have been a couple of press events which Gotham was present at: the Leipzig Games Convention, and X07 in Canada.

Both myself and Alan Mealor attended Leipzig to give a couple of days worth of behind-closed-doors demos. Alan is a Lead Environment Artist at Bizarre, and the fine chap who's team brought you both Las Vegas and Macau. Neither of us had visited the GC before, so it was really cool to experience the show for the first time. Overall things seemed extremely well organised, with a really decent developer turnout and hundreds of thousands of gamers to battle through (as the show is open to the public).

In a stroke of genius there is both a large public section of the convention, and a more private "exhibitors only" section where the biz is done. Obviously the business part is much quieter and laid back, and provides a great place to escape the hustle and bustle. Proper thumbs up from me!

So here's a quick recap of what we demoed at the show:

The brand new intro movie. This was put together literally days before Leipzig kicked off, and we just about had enough time to throw it onto a kit and fly it out to Germany. Unfortunately we can't release the full high-definition version due to licensing restrictions, but you can see a shakeycam version at Gamersyde.
Arcade Mode: This is your more traditional PGR game mode, much like you're used to with PGR2 and PGR3. Medal pursuit is the order of the day, as you take on stages over various different disciplines in order to collect all the platinums. PGR Veterans will want to start here to quickly get up to speed and earn some medals.

Gotham Career: A brand new game mode for PGR4, unlike anything we've done before. This is really the "meat and potatoes" of PGR4, and the area in which we're hoping people will spend the most time. The idea is that you're a real-life PGR racing hero, with a name, nationality, and rank. You start your career at number 72 in the world... or in lay-mans terms: dead last. The objective is to play through the season, tackling championships and invitationals until you finally reach Rank 1. This will take several seasons to achieve, and as you gain skills and popularity you'll find more events open up to you.

Time Attack: racing against a timer is back, and better than we've ever been able to do before. This time around you'll be able to set up to three ghost slots (or disable ghosts altogether if they're not your thing). You can pull ghosts from your Xbox 360, the Live leaderboards, or from PGR On Demand (the best in the world, or your friends).
Multiplayer Custom Match: we spoke briefly about multiplayer, but didn't do any direct demos due to only having one kit on hand. However, we did confirm that Cat and Mouse is returning (updated and now featuring bikes), and also we've introduced a brand new game mode: Bulldog. The idea is that one player starts off as the Bulldog in a free roam city (no barriers), and must "tag" the other players to turn them into Bulldogs too. Eventually there is only player left, who must evade the other 7 players as long as possible. Kudos is earned whenever you're on the run!
Multiplayer Ranked Match: online competitive matches have been totally reworked for PGR4 from what they were in number 3. We now have a party-based system (kind of like Halo 2), which keeps you and your friends in the same game as you progress from playlist to playlist.

PGR Shop: This time around, Kudos is king. Everything is purchased through your in-game Kudos... there are no credits, and no cash. Your kudos is spent in the PGR Shop, and it's not just new vehicles that feature here. Track packs, new game modes, cheats, gamerpics etc. can all be found here (providing you have the Kudos of course!). The two cooler examples we showed at Leipzig are the "3d glasses cheat", which allows you to render your Photo Mode pics in true red/blue 3d style, and the "Gamer Picture Pack". The latter costs a cool 1,000,000K (by far the most expensive item in the shop), and gives you a single gamer pic for your Xbox 360 profile. If you see anybody online with this pic, you know they've got more Kudos than sense!
PGR On Demand: The last huge new feature we showed was PGR On Demand... the spiritual successor to Gotham TV. I'll write a full article on PGR On Demand in the next week or two, as there is too much to mention here in a single bullet point!

We were also present and correct at X07, with Derek Chapman on the show floor to help out with all those who fancied a quick race. Derek is another Lead Environment Artist at Bizarre, and his team has most recently been responsible for bringing both Quebec and New York City to life in PGR4.

Derek also managed to get some awesome photographs of the event, including some pimped up supercars bearing the PGR4 logo. Nice!

Finally, to finish up we'll be bringing you a new PGR4 photo mode shot every day (or so) from now until launch. These photos have been taken by the Bizarre team, using all of the tools and tricks available to you in the final game's Photo Mode. So consider the bar well and truly set!