For those that are unfamiliar with the original, Need For Speed Underground (NFSU)is an arcade style racing game that takes the series from the highways to urban city streets. By participating in street races, your aim is to win as many races as possible and climb to the top of the street racing scene. To do this you have the ability to modify your car for both performance and looks.

In NFSU2, these aspects of the game are vastly expanded upon from the original. The bulk of the single player game is played in career mode, which starts you off with a fairly standard stock car and a small amount of cash in your pocket, and sets you loose on the city streets. Dotted around the city are the locations of various street races where you can earn cash and enhance your reputation. A good reputation will get you entry into the Underground Racing League, and score you contracts with parts manufacturers. The more reputation points you get, the more lucrative the sponsorships become. However the catch is that just crossing the line first is not enough ' reputation points are awarded according to how far in front you finish. This adds an extra dimension to the usual cycle of racing, and works really well. Even if you're in front, you can't relax for a moment, adding great tension and excitement to each race.

There are five different areas of the greater city to cruise through; all interconnected with tunnels and freeways, similar to the Grand Theft Auto series, although on a slightly smaller scale. The game starts off in the city centre, and you unlock new sections as you progress through the game. Travelling around the city is a seamless affair, with no loading screens between city sections once they have been unlocked. Each section has its own slightly different streetscape, making for good variations in the tracks available - Jackson Heights is made mostly of windy mountain roads; the airport has tracks that incorporate the runways themselves, complete with planes taking off overhead; Coal Harbour is an industrial area complete with container depots and the city centre has and narrow streets filled with plenty of traffic. If you lose your way the game also has an inbuilt GPS system that will guide you to your next destination which is good news for the navigationally challenged people like myself!

There are several styles of races to participate in throughout the game: Circuit races are the traditional multi-lap event where your and your competitors race through a section of the city streets. Sprint races are basically the same but just require you to race from point A to point B. Drag racing is a straight course all about accurate gear shifting and dodging objects. Drift racing is held on a short course where you earn points for the length and sharpness of your power sliding. Street X, a new addition to NFSU2, is a precision, bumper-to-bumper race on tight, closed tracks. Underground Racing League (URL) races are a traditional lap based race, but this time on a closed circuit. Finally, Outrun races are a short race between two racers where your goal is to leave your opponent for dust. All these various events add a good amount of variety to the game. The circuits are well planned out, with the differing streetscapes adding variation even across the same race type.

The way in which you arrive at races also adds to the variety. To participate in a race, which is designated by a particular colour dot on your map, you have to drive there. As you progress through the game several other side challenges will also pop up. For example, to land a DVD cover, you have to track down a photographer within a certain time limit. This limit will test your knowledge of the city and its interconnecting freeways.

You are also in constant contact with other street racers through an SMS system. These other racers will give you hints to secret races which aren't marked on your map. These races are generally easy to win and are a great way to boost your funds and reputation points. All in all, the variety and challenge offered by the career mode is as much as you could expect out of any racing game, and gives it a lot of replayability.

This variety extends to the cars themselves as you would expect. There are over 30 cars to choose from in the game, from a little Ford Focus through to tough SUVs. All cars in the game are licensed from major manufacturers such as Mazda, Nissan, Hyundai and plenty more. These cars can all be customised for both tuning and looks, and the amount of modifications available is simply stunning. Nine different performance categories can be upgraded separately or in packages, including engine, brakes, tyres, suspension, turbo and more. All of the parts are from real manufacturers and will affect the cars performance and handling.

You can also tweak the performance of each part on a test track, and save and load different settings that can be used for the different events. Visual mods are also available in abundance, in fact there are over twice as many visual mods available as the original game! You can modify the look of just about anything on the car ' from the basics such as paint, vinyls, body, hydraulics and wheels, to the finer details such as your dash, windows, headlights and sponsor decals. You can even modify your boot and install a CD changer and subwoofer! About the only thing you can't do is take out your back seat and replace it with massive speakers ' but maybe that's just an Australian thing!

Graphically, there is no doubting that NFSU2 is a very slick looking game on the surface. Neon lights and pretty colours abound, and the cars look reasonably realistic. It is easy however to notice the PS2 legacy of the game such as aliasing and blurring. The backgrounds are decent but not highly detailed and since the game is set during the night there is not a lot to see anyway. At any give time rain can kick in, which both adds a nice touch to the environment and affects your cars handling. This is well and good, but the problem with it is that it kicks in on just about every race, which can become very tedious. The frame rate is steady with no noticeable lag or glitches.

There is also a lot of corporate product placement in the games ' advertising billboards and the like. This really puts some people off, and with good reason. However, these really don't interfere with the feel of the game, particularly since much of the game is about brand names anyway. One has to wonder though, that with all the money EA no doubt received in advertising revenue, why we have to pay for this game at all! The cut scenes between game sections are done in a comic book style, which is interesting at first, but ultimately adds little to the game. I found that after the first few I was just skipping them to get on with the game. On the whole, the graphics are good but don't quite live up to the Xbox's high standards as seen in such games as Project Gotham Racing 2.

The sound is one of the most disappointing aspects of the game. The engine sound of the cars lack grunt, and the sound that the cars make when slamming into a wall or the like basically sounds like a couple of shopping trolleys crashing together. There is a voiceover component of the game, voiced by the sexy Brooke Burke who aside from being a Playboy coverstar is also a pretty popular TV host in America, most notably for Wild On! Her acting in this game however is rather sub-par, often sounding a bit bored with the whole thing.

The music is fairly impressive, featuring a range of popular artists such as Snoop Dogg, Queens of the Stone Age, Ministry, Helmet and more. Most of the music is either hard rock or rap, which is great if you like that kind of music. Almost unforgivable though is the lack of custom soundtrack support, which is really such an important part of racing games and something that EA really needs to look at adding to more of their games.

The multiplayer offering is reasonably good. There is a standard split screen mode so you can challenge a friend, and all of the race modes are available to use. The game also offers Xbox Live play, which is quite well done. Again you are able to use any of the race modes and can play with up to 6 players. Matches can be ranked or unranked and restrictions can be placed on the number of mods available. Being an EA game, Xbox Live is played on the EA servers, which I found to give a pretty good experience, at least by comparison to Burnout 3.. Sadly for the non-brodbanded who have more than one friend, no System Link option has been included.