Multiplayer Playtest
PGR 3 is Ready to Rock
The office was quiet on the day the call went out: there’s a PGR 3 Bugbash in the Playtest Lab! Our Web Ninjas rushed down the hall, ready to take to the track. For a few glorious hours, we were surrounded by diehard gamers, fighting for our lives in multiplayer races. I actually ran to a machine – I had been practicing for hours every day, preparing for the inevitable moment when I would compete against other live drivers. Now that I’ve raced against the MGS game testers, I want more, and I want it now.
The build we were playing wasn’t final, of course, but even this late in the game, it looked exceptionally good. I had already scanned the car lists, looking for my favorite cars in each class. I blasted through the Options menu, selected a manual transmission, and jumped back to my favorite section of the game: Playtime. Within moments, I was online in Xbox Live, using the Find Game function to look for a random room. Seven drivers were waiting in the lobby, selecting their cars for the next race.
The host was talking to someone about the cars we would select for this first test, and I knew within moments that I would be able to drive my favorite: the McLaren F1 LM. By the time he had chosen a point-to-point section of the Nordschleife, I knew I had a chance to ace that race. Online, I practically live in Nurburgring. The seconds counted down, and the moment I had my green light, I gunned through the first five gears, hitting 190 before I was even in the first turn. Engine sounds and Skinny Puppy blared through my earphones. The road ahead was clear. That first race was my ideal race: I seized a lead and held it, keeping on the road for a track I knew from memory. Without straying from the asphalt, the race was mine within minutes.
As we returned to the lobby, the host announced that we would be switching car classes. I knew that on his screen, he had the power to alter the parameters of the race, changing day to night, jumping between cities, or even booting any poor sports who couldn’t keep up gracefully. He could even capture a film of the race, a feature I would have killed for in other racing games. Between races, I had my own choices to make: the game gave me the option to make a few feedback selections on whether I wanted to race with everyone again. This was only a playtest, of course, so I stuck around. Everyone had raced clean, but I wasn’t prepared to add anyone to my Friends List yet.
The second race was held in Tokyo, where I suspected the streets would be winding and narrow. Scanning through the cars in the class, I selected the Pagani Zonda, a car that had been good to me in other games. Without the confidence I had in the previous track, a costly mis-shift early in the race put me back a ways, but I fought to take the race back by any means necessary. Seconds later, a car in front of me spun out, and I noted the name over his car as I deftly avoided him.
Scanning the heads-up display and peeking at my rearview mirror, I then noticed that I was bolting for a section of track I had never seen before: a downward spiral ramp. Brakes screamed. The car protested, throwing in its oversteer as I fought for control into the first tight turn. Exploiting what I had learned from drift sessions, I countersteered for control on the turn, heading sideways into the corner as trail braking slowed me down. Okay, I’ll admit I scraped some paint and lost some Kudos, but by the time I was back on the straights, I had actually passed someone on that narrow turn. With that little maneuver, I inched back up into third place.
For the next three hours, I fought for my life, doing my best to make a name for myself. I’m a Web Ninja, after all. I was a writer in a room full of people who had tested this game for weeks. Maybe I didn’t win every race, but the competition was fast and furious. A ruthlessly efficient race marshal kept the races under control, and once I found a room of drivers around my level, I actually forgot for a while that we were in a playtest. To be honest, it didn’t even seem like testing. The game didn’t crash. The graphics didn’t glitch. The game was aces: three hours of velocity fueled by adrenaline.
The bugbash is over now, and I’m back to racing offline again. I’ve been practicing with cars in different classes, memorizing tracks for the next online rampage. With every Kudo I score, with each medal I unlock, I know my PGR 3 skills are getting sharper. When the Xbox 360 launches, I will be online, and I will be ready. Hordes of racers will be there waiting for the same event. Some will be new to racing, and some will have stories from racing games years ago. It doesn’t matter whether they’re noobs or pros, because I know they will all – you will all – go through what I went through in that playtest. Anyone there on Launch Day better be ready to race, ‘cause I’m ready to rock. Get ready for velocity and adrenaline.