When Xbox World Australia's Breeanna Price originally reviewed Mashed late 2004, she was pretty impressed with the game overall, granting it an impressive score of 82%. Yet the game was not without fault, and many players- both press and fans alike- were vocal in their criticism of certain aspects of the game. And in a strange twist, developers Supersonic Software took it all to heart and decided to release a new and improved version of the game, containing fixes, tweaks, and a slew of new content. But is Mashed: Fully Loaded worth speeding out to get?

In case you were one of the many people who missed Mashed the first time, it's a dangerously addictive top-down racing game, whose formula for success is one part simplicity and three parts carnage! The premise is so basic it almost defies belief: drive your car and beat the other cars. There's no complex back-story filled with daytime soap dialogue or murky grudges, hell, there's not even a 'you have been chosen to participate in The Ultimate Death-Race of the Future!!!' introduction. It really is just about the racing- and the blowing up of things too.

You see, Mashed doesn't even play like your standard racing game; much of the action simply revolves around driving fast- or smart- enough to get to the edge of the screen. This causes your opponents to blow up, and you to earn a point. The process continues until somebody has enough points to win, which is usually 8. If you blow up, you'll lose a point, and the whole thing swings back and forth like a perturbed pendulum.

Outside of this Battle Mode there are other types of events: a straight-up Race, Survival mode, Fugitive, Beat the Bomb and Kill the Copter. Fugitive requires you to chase another player who has a slight head start and tag them, Beat the Bomb is a checkpoint challenge that ends in a catastrophic explosion if you don't meet your deadlines, and Kill the Copter requires you to pick up a variety of weapon power-ups and blow up some sort of Apache helicopter gunship that took an intense dislike to your colourful little car.

Your arsenal of available weapons is impressive: there are shotguns, rockets, mortars, machineguns and oil-slicks to name just a few. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and not every weapon is suitable for the task at hand. You never start with any armaments, so it's up to you to collect them as you go by driving over the corresponding power-ups on the track

One of the improvements made in Fully Loaded is that text will now display the name of the item you picked up- handy, given that the camera is often so distant that it can be almost impossible to see what you've got. In fact, there are quite a few minor fixes and changes like this- the camera is a little more intuitive, the controls have been tightened up, and they now vary depending on the vehicle you're driving.

In addition to the small stuff, a swag of new content has been added, and without sounding too much like a press release, we'll give you the highlights! First and foremost, there are now 30 tracks to race on, which are essentially the original 13 courses reversed in a mirror mode plus a new track. It may not sound like much of an improvement, but the courses might as well be brand new given how alien they feel when you're racing in the other direction

The follow-on to this is of course more racing events- now numbering 60, there really is a hell of a lot of single-player content here now, and the guts of the tournament mode should keep you busy for quite awhile. If for some reason it doesn't however, Supersonic Software have added three new tournaments that can only be accessed by beating all the other challenges in the bronze, silver and gold category. The new tournaments don't add any new tracks or events per se, but they are still pretty good fun. Turbo pits you against the A.I. in a Formula 1 racing car, and the speeds are truly insane! Ice and Night are exactly what you'd expect: driving on ice or driving at night. Admittedly they're nothing to write home about, but it does add a couple of extra hours entertainment.

Visually, not a lot has changed really'there's a new interface which looks a bit nicer, and some of the levels have been given some cosmetic touch-ups, but on the whole, Fully Loaded looks exactly like its predecessor. The once charmingly simple graphics seem a bit tattered around the edge, but the truth is you'll be going so fast or be so focused on staying alive that you won't even notice. The sound is identical too, and sadly nobody thought to add a custom soundtrack option. The music is so generic that it's doubtful you'd be able to recall a single tune, even if you were being held at gunpoint.

Multiplayer mayhem is the heart of the Mashed experience however, and thankfully this remains unchanged from the original, though all the beneficial tweaking and fine tuning makes the experience even better. Four players can take part on the same screen in a variety of game modes, and it provides some of the most frenetic, heart-racing moments of any game. This is where the daytime soaps and old grudges come to the surface, as you and your mates vie furiously for first place, and the sweet revenge of the air-strike weapon will fuel vendettas all night long.

The single biggest complaint though is that virtually *nothing* is available for play out of the box, be it singleplayer or multiplayer. You'll begin with one event on one track, and multiplayer isn't much better. It's a bloody pain actually, and it means you can't easily just take your copy of Fully Loaded to a friend's house and get stuck into it unless you have a memory card to transport your save game. Speaking of, be sure you enable Autosaving when you begin the game, otherwise you'll lose ALL your progress. This is located, counter-intuitively, in the 'Options' menu, rather than the main menu.