Ubisoft has its upcoming car combat game Notorious: Die to Drive on hand at E3 2004. The game will let you play as an up-and-coming West Coast gangster who starts off with only two friends, a single car, and a baseball bat. However, by defeating your rivals in a series of races on one of 20 different courses, you'll eventually build up a full-on gang of supporters and a stable of up to 20 cars. You'll also use up to 30 different weapons, including shotguns, assault rifles, and rocket launchers. Playing skillfully in races, whether you successfully kill off your rivals with a weapon or place first in a race, will earn you cash that will let you build up your humble apartment into a tricked-out villa with plenty of what Ubisoft press materials describe as "bling."

　　The actual races seem to control rather easily, at least on the PS2. We played a pre-alpha version of the game and were able to pick up the basics of the game rather quickly. The PS2's R1 trigger button is used to accelerate, while the R2 trigger gives your car a speed boost. The L1 trigger is a handbrake, which lets you "powerslide" through corners by briefly slowing you down while you accelerate into turns, and the L2 trigger changes the camera to a rear view to let you shoot at enemies behind you. The PS2 controller's triangle button lets you drop a weapon, which is useful if you're running low on ammo. The square button lets you use your character's "special" attack. You build up a "special" meter by skillfully driving and shooting, and each of the game's 30 characters has a different special attack, which includes being able to instantly kill an enemy driver with a headshot from a sniper rifle or blanketing the racetrack with continuous fire from a Gatling gun. The X button lets you fire your weapon forward, though you can also use the right analog stick to fire your weapon in any direction, and your left analog stick steers. It may sound complex, but it certainly doesn't seem to be in practice, and although what we played was an extremely early pre-alpha version with somewhat simple-looking environments and textures, it ran at an extremely brisk frame rate that didn't hitch up once.

　　Notorious apparently isn't intended to have any kind of epic story, but it seems like it could make for a good, fast-paced game, especially in the game's four-player multiplayer modes. Both the PS2 version and the Xbox version of the game will allow for four-player split-screen play on the same television set, and the Xbox version will also support up to eight players over Xbox Live. Notorious: Die to Drive is scheduled for release next year on the Xbox and the PS2.