These lineups of new features should be more than enough to lure fans to pick up the sequel. Despite the presence of real-world cars and locations, PG2 sticks to its arcadish root with unique reward system. The game rewards you for driving style and recklessness. So the better you slide around corners and perform extreme maneuvers such as busting some serious hang-time or drafting behind your opponents, the more bonus points you will attain. These bonus points can be used to unlock more cars.

Those who have played the original PGR will definitely be pleased about the sheer amount of vehicles offered by the sequel, and import enthusiast would certainly be able to live up to their dreams of burning rubber like in 2 Fast 2 Furious. PGR2's hundreds of licensed cars are not the only thing that will keep you pumped up by the edge of your seat as you floor the Jaguar, Ferrari, or Porsche to its maximum aptitude! It is the game's plethora of modes that will overwhelm you.

If you want a quick crash course of the game, you can start with Instant Action. Instant Action puts you straight into the driver's seat without the hassle of tinkering with the game's menu. However, if you want get a taste of serious drag racing, Kudos World Series is the way to go. It's a long sequence of racing events arranged in more than a dozen categories of auto types.

You must complete each event within each class successively. It sounds daunting but fortunately the game lets you choose from five difficulty settings that range from novice to expert. These difficulty settings do affect the racing conditions, the speed of your competitors, and how many bonus points given for the event.

While it is easier to unlock the subsequent events in the novice level, your ability to unlock new cars is limited because the numbers of reward points (or Kudos) are small in this race setting. You can always go back and retry those events at a higher difficulty level. However, your reward points wouldn't add up. Your race performance will be entirely based on your best run on a given track. The vehicles featured in this game are divided into four classes. The first class includes several varieties of modest compact sports cars, like the Honda Civic Type-R, the Ford Focus, and the MINI Cooper S. The second class features sport utility vehicles such as the Mercedes ML55 AMG and BMW X5. The third class is comprised of the classic ones like the Jaguar E-Type. The fourth class is your ultimate collection of the fastest and most expensive cars, which includes the TVR Cerbera, the Porsche Carrera GT and the Enzo Ferrari.

Most of us cannot afford these high-priced exotic vehicles let alone buy a luxury sedan with our small paycheck. At least with the comfort of an Xbox, you can live the dream of owning one. It might not be the same as having a nice Lamborghini parked outside your garage, but who wants to pay a thousand-dollar monthly insurance anyway? When it comes to handling and speed, there's a significant difference between cars from the lower classes versus those in the higher classes.

Each car has its own distinct top speed, acceleration, power sliding, and handling capability. You can choose to modify your car's paint job or change its license plate. You also get to wear a personalized driver helmet to go with your leather interior upholstery. At the start of the race, you have about 30 cars that are already available. As you race and earn kudos, you will receive tokens to unlock other hidden cars. But saving up on your kudos takes precious time. Fortunately, the game lets you test-drive that new car prior to unlocking it.

The previous game had hundreds of tracks, but those tracks were all set in London, Tokyo, San Francisco, or New York City. PGR2 boasts an entirely new set of venues based on real world locations, including Hong Kong, Moscow, Barcelona, and Sydney. Races can take place no matter what the conditions are whether it's raining or sunny; whether it's daytime or nighttime. All tracks vary significantly in shape in size. Some feature frequent hairpin turns, where individual cornering skills will be put to test, while others sport long straightaways where you can smoke your opponents out to dust.

A driving game is only as good as its handling and physics model. In this respect, PGR2 does a nice job with the responsiveness of the controls. It has been designed with accessibility in mind rather than focus on simulation aspects. Before, it was difficult to unlock some of the later races and cars due to steep learning curve. Now that the difficulty has toned down, players will be able to appreciate other features of the game. At any rate, the simple controls make PGR2 easy to pick up and play. There's enough realism to differentiate each car type. For instance, SUVs are heavier and harder to slide, while sports cars are mobile and can power slide like Namco's Ridge Racer.

One of the problems with the past PGR has been its lopsided AI and it is the same issue that's bugging the sequel. The computer-controlled opponents will only follow along the ideal line in each circuit. It is almost impossible to win at harder difficulties when the CPU races the line flawlessly. Don't expect your computer opponents to be lenient or forgiving, if you try to overtake. If anything, they will ram into you if you attempt to bar them from their line. Sounds like Twisted Metal Black? You bet! Speaking of ram, PGR 2 has car damage in effect. You won't see your car pick up significant dents until it has inflicted considerable amount of fender-benders. The damage you build up to your car does not have any effect on your car's performance. So ramming into a guard rail or colliding with another vehicle will only slow you down, but it will not take you out of the race just because your car is heavily damaged.

Online play is one of the main highlights of PGR 2. You can choose the race type whether it'd be exhibition or kudos, turn collisions on or off, set the scenario, laps, time of day, weather conditions, and put restrictions to the types of vehicles allowed. The whole online experience has been smooth driving regardless of how many racers are participating. There are a few noticeable lags here and there such as sudden collisions and opponents warping onto different areas of the track. These minor glitches are nothing that a person can't overlook.

In addition to online play, PGR2 will have its share of downloadable content. The game has three empty rooms to showcase what is reserved exclusively for Xbox Live cars. These cars are as sweet as the ones you have offline. There's even an old-school shooting mini-game called Geometric Wars. It is similar to Robotron the way the gameplay is set. While the graphics are nothing more than pixilated lines with funny colors, you will still find yourself crazy for it when you see Star Trek-like particles flying everywhere.

Graphically, PGR2 is one of the best-looking racing games out there. It features sharp textures and accurate modeling. The tracks themselves look so real that it is almost touchable! The realistic lighting and shadows give the surroundings a lifelike appearance. It is very easy to tell one city from another given the amount of work that is placed into the landmarks. However, some areas are a bit more animated than others. For example, when you reach Washington DC, you will see the leaves start to fall.

There are other little visual touches that make driving in PGR2 much larger than life such as bump-mapped roads and animated drivers that change gears when cornering. The game does an excellent job of gradually adjusting the lighting point to reflect the hours of the day that went by. As day turn to night, the sunlight that bounces off the car's hood also changes directions. What's more, the wet weather condition accurately depicts the mood of those gloomy months of winter. Even though this is only a game, there is something with those gray clouds that is depressing to look at.

When it comes to music, PGR2 provides more than 240 different location-specific soundtracks that cover virtually every popular genre that exist today. There are more than 30 different DJs that host its own radio station in their country. In addition, you get to choose from three radio stations to listen to wherever city you are in. This location-specific style of music brings a whole new experience to racing. While PGR2's music defines a new dimension to driving, the rest of the audio segment is also quite good. The noise of car's revving and tires squealing are realistically captured. The sound cars colliding and smashing into guard rails are also nicely depicted.

PGR2 is no doubt one of the best racing games out there. You've got tons of licensed cars and racing modes to choose from, which give it plenty of long-term appeal to the fans of this genre. The game even supports progressive scan displays, which means that you'll see all the graphical elements in greater details with higher-end TV sets. The gameplay is friendlier this time around, so you get to enjoy the other features of PGR2. There's really not much to gripe about this game except maybe the AI that needs a bit more fine-tuning and some minor lag issues online. Nevertheless, it is still a solid performance.