On the surface, Burnout 2 looks and plays like most other racers. You’ve got a variety of (unlicensed) vehicles, including roadsters, pickup trucks, sports coupes and compacts coupled with a nice mix of tracks. And of course there are plenty of unlockables, including extra vehicles (50’s muscle cars, police cruisers and more), decal sets and new racing venues. What makes Burnout 2 different is the emphasis on speed and mayhem. Probably the coolest bit about Burnout 2 are the crashes, which are car tossing, guardrail grinding, truck bashing moments of sheer joy.

Aside from the Crash mode, which has you ploughing headlong into packs of traffic in an attempt to cause the most mayhem, there are several other racing options. The Single Race, Time Attack and Championship modes are your standard fare, and certainly offer up a lot of fun, but Burnout 2 is all about arcade action, which means you’ll spend a lot of time in Crash or Pursuit mode (after you unlock it). Both modes reward you with amazing crashes (and cash for doing damage.) Pursuit mode is especially fun as you’ll be driving around in a police cruiser bashing your opponents into oblivion.

Vehicle control in Burnout 2 is kept simple, with the triggers controlling gas and brake while the left stick steers. Burnout 2 rewards you for dangerous driving, such as heading into oncoming traffic or taking huge jumps by slowly filling your burn meter, which when full, will allow you to activate a turbo boost, sending you screaming through traffic at lightning speed. The boost effect is well done, with enough motion blur to make you feel like you’re blasting along at Mach 2, while still allowing you to maintain a semblance of control. To make it even cooler, if you keep driving dangerously while boosting, you’ll keep filling the boost meter. Fill the meter before the first boost times out, and you get a burnout, which extends the turbo boost. Keep chaining together burnouts and you’ll be racing at warp speed for entire laps.

Assuming you’re more into crashing than racing, you’ll be overjoyed to know that Burnout 2 comes with 30 special crash courses. The crash courses are short tracks filled with traffic that you go barrelling into hoping to cause the biggest crash possible. The more mayhem you cause, the more cash you earn. It’s a simple system, and thanks to Xbox Live enabled leaderboards, you can compare your cash earnings with your fellow wreckless drivers from across the world. Speaking of the leaderboards, you can also track your best race times, longest burnout chain and other stats online. It’s definitely a nice touch, though I’m still trying to figure out how some folks are maintaining such blistering paces on some tracks.(I will break 38 seconds on the airport!)

Fans of eye-candy will really enjoy Burnout 2. With support for 480p progressive scan and widescreen modes, you’ll have a hard time finding a more visually appealing arcade racer on the Xbox. Even on a standard television, the vehicles and environments shine with plenty of details and lots of color. Switch to in-car mode to watch the textured pavement streak beneath your car as the landscape tears by in burnout mode. Vehicles can be customized with decal sets, which are earned by finishing the standard championship and racing in the custom championship mode.

While the speedy racing looks glorious, it’s the crashes that matter in Burnout 2. Realistic physics collide head-on with an over-the-top sense of speed to create some of the most spectacular crashes seen on the Xbox. Cars fly, trucks jackknife and body panels shear in a deliciously animated slow-motion effect. And if you’re feeling particularly sadistic, you can fire up the replay camera to watch it all over again.

Remember the Xbox Custom Soundtrack feature that’s made very few actual in-game appearances? Just when most of us were ready to give up on it, Acclaim throws it into Burnout 2. So burn your favorite tunes to your Xbox hard drive and enjoy them in full Dolby 5.1 audio. While you’re enjoying the tunes, you’ll need to to pay attention to the game’s sounds, which are some of the best for an Xbox racer. Engine sounds vary by the vehicles, with the roadster having a touch of a whine, and the sport coupe giving off a nice throaty roar. Other sounds, such as tires squealing and metal grinding against guardrails sounds just like the real thing.

If the variety of cars and tracks doesn’t keep you playing this game, surely the multiplayer races and Xbox Live scoreboards will. Most race modes allow for two-player gaming, while up to four can enjoy the crash courses. Log into Xbox Live to compare your best times (and best crashes) with the rest of the world. Burnout 2 is a game you’ll be playing for a long time.

Burnout 2 is a welcome addition to the Xbox’s rather short list of quality racing titles. With a blistering sense of speed, excellent graphics and plenty of race modes, any racing fan would do well to buy this game straight away! Even for non-racers Burnout 2 would make an excellent rental, if not a great purchase.