It seems that every couple of weeks lately a new racing game turns up on the XBW gaming den doorstop, begging and pleading with us to play and review it and when it's a sequel the first thing we hope for is that all the quirks and gameplay issues of the first one have been rectified.

To be honest, I always thought that the original Burnout game was a highly under rated title as it made no pretense to be anything other than what it is. An extremely fast arcade racer that's all about extreme speeds, high speed drifting and spectacular crashes. It had a number of gameplay niggles such as the ‘burnout meter' probably being too hard to fill up, too few cars and tracks and the collision detection was probably a touch on the sensitive side but I'm happy to report that the developers, Criterion, have fixed all these issues, enhanced the graphics and in Burnout 2, created the best arcade racing experience, not only on Xbox but on just about any platform.

Even if you're totally familiar with Burnout the first thing that you have to complete is ‘Offensive Driving 101' which is the games tutorial mode. It doesn't take long to complete, probably only about 20 minutes and it's a good way to brush up on your high speed drifting technique before jumping into the games other Championship mode, single race, Pursuit and Crash mode.

Championship mode is the meat of Burnout 2 where you take part in multi car races and points are allocated based on your position at the end of the race. Pretty standard stuff. What's great about this mode is that it's not just race, race, race repeat, but rather it's broken up with other variations such as Pursuit mode where the aim is to slam your police car into a fleeing baddy a number of times to prevent him from escaping. Complete this and the police cruiser becomes available as a selectable car to use in the normal races and as a double bonus, the pursuit mode becomes available as a two player option. And as well as the pursuit mode and new cars, new tracks become available for use in multiplayer and single race mode once you complete them in the Championship mode.

The racing tears along at insane speeds and as in the first game, your Burnout meter fills up the more dangerously you drive. Rush headlong into traffic down the wrong side of the road (well the wrong side of the road in America anyway), having near misses and completing drifts all help to fill the Burnout meter and once it's full, well have you seen movies like Mad Max, Fast and the Furious where the hero activates a Nitrous kit and the car accelerates off like its got a jet engine? That's what Burnout 2 is all about. Fill up your Burnout meter, activate your Turbo, watch the motion blur kick in and away you go! All that's missing is the extra G-forces to hurl you back into your seat as your car accelerates at speeds not fit for human survival.

With all this, excellent controls, the improved graphics, the great looking levels which include Miami, Los Angeles, The Rocky Mountains, New Mexico and an International airport and Burnout 2 is simply arcade racing at its best. The racing just cannot be faulted. When you're hurtling 150mph down the wrong side of the road and thread your way between two oncoming log trucks or buses with inches to spare on either side, it creates a true rush and is one of the few games that has actually had me almost shutting me eyes in fear. Heaps of extra great track details just help to immerse you into it as well. Low flying jets, trains, animated signage, excellent reflections on the cars, great lighting and excellent artwork all round with great textures, well with it all running at a very high framerate that never skips a beat, everything runs lightning fast and just looks great. Xbox exclusive titles like Racing Evoluzione may look better but Burnout 2, for a cross platform title, looks excellent.

When you want a break from the Championship mode and get the urge to plow recklessly into traffic to see how much carnage you can cause then you are definitely going to enjoy the crash mode. Crash mode involves hitting top speed and slamming your car at the best angle to create the most damage possible. Each Crash level has targets to aim for to receive bronze, silver or gold medals which then unlock further crash zones. Once you crash you are treated to a nice slow motion display of all the carnage that you cause and at the end all the points are tallied up. The crashes look totally destructive with log trucks, petrol tankers, normal traffic and buses all slamming into each other and debris littering the road. Crash mode is heaps of fun and it even convinced my non Xbox playing wife to have a go and she had a blast with it, even scoring a number of gold medals herself! I'm not a sicko or anything, but for Burnout 3 I would love to see the Crash mode taken a few steps further with more variation in the traffic such as those trucks you see carrying cars, garbage trucks and other nice heavy targets to aim at as well as the trucks payloads coming loose as well to create even more destruction. Every time I would play Crash mode and see a log truck sliding out of control into a bus I would think "now if only the logs would come off and flatten a few cars as well” so hopefully that's something we may see In the future with some nice big chunky car flattening sound effects as well.

The sound in Burnout 2 is great as well. The cars sound great but not overly loud and the crash sound effects do a great job. There's also heaps of great touches like drivers honking at you (as well as flashing their headlights) as you hurtle at them down the wrong side of the street. Burnout 2 even features a dynamic soundtrack of sorts as while the music plays, once you bit the Turbo button, the music volume kicks up a few notches until the turbo runs out and then it goes back to normal. It's an excellent touch.

Burnout 2 also supports the Xbox custom soundtrack feature which is always welcome, but with 10Gig of hard drive space it's a shame that you cannot save your replays or even the crashes to play back to your mates later or simply watch by yourself. You can't even control the replays which is disappointing as it would have been cool to pause or slow-mo the replay just before a massive accident and watch it all unfold again. With so many cool gameplay modes in Burnout 2 it's a real shame that you couldn't save the replays.

One last issue I had with the game is that in multiplayer crash mode, each person has to share controller 1. You can select up to 4 players and then compete in Crash mode to see who can cause the most damage, but even if you have 4 controllers you have to share the one. Maybe someone can point out to me why it's like that as I really cannot work out why.