A fan of the Need for Speed^TM franchise since it first appeared on the disastrous 3DO, I’ve played just about every installment since, including a brief drive of last year’s first ‘Underground’ game. Good looking enough, but rather confined (you just chose races from a menu) and suffering from a slightly dodgy frame rate when things got busy, NFS Underground was the first foray into the world of underground racing and modding, and whilst it allowed you to tune your cars, paint them puke-inducingly funny colours, stick horrendous stripes on them and add some other mechanical twiddly bits, it was all a bit unremarkable really. For the faithful, the Need For Speed franchise seemed to have lost its way a bit, this recent offshoot into the Underground world of custom street racing seems a long way from racing Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porsches and Lotus' along sunny highway roads...

The fictitious city of Bay View allows you to free-roam around it, unlocking 5 extra interconnected areas as you win races. Although you can select races from the garage menu you can also use the streets as your menus – simply finding and driving into icons to select the various types of races. Whilst I understand that underground racing is often done at night, one of the most disappointing things for me was that you only ever get to race around the city of Bay View at night, and the frequent rain (it makes the roads slippery and cuts the visibility, duh) is the only variation in the conditions. But the city looks great, with some basic but effective lighting effects making the varied landscape and architecture of Bay Hill look like a cross between LA, Las Vegas, New York and maybe Bournemouth.

Along with your typical 2, 3 or 4 lap circuit races, sprint (point-to-point), drift and drag competitions, Need for Speed Underground 2 also features 4 new game modes; including StreetX (race against other cars on tight, twisty circuits) Outrun (literally chase an opponent, catch him and then outrun him – you have the entire city to play with), Downhill Drift (drift racing on a sweeping downhill course) and the Underground Racing League (circuit races on the purpose-built race track or even at the Bay View airport). The drag races from last year’s game return and use virtually the same, weird control system. All of a sudden you’re given a manual gearbox, whether you’ve been using one or not, and rather than properly steering the car down the track you just select which lane you want to be in – it’s a truly odd control system that feels more like you’re controlling a nitrus-boosted train, but still manages to be as addictive as the rest of the game.

The performance tuning aspect has been significantly enhanced, and allows you to fine-tune more than 20 aspects of your vehicle's handling and performance with more than 50 upgradable components, and there are literally hundreds of new custom visual enhancements; metallic and pearlescent paintwork, hundreds of decals and vinyls, scissor doors, custom rims, spinner rims, spoilers, headlights, side skirts, roof scoops, hoods, neon lights, nitrous purges (of various colours), hydraulics and even outrageous widebody kits, which allow you to create a truly personalized and unique car.

Online the game suffers from the same server problems as Burnout 3, and even manages to create a few new ones of its own – it doesn’t even appear to be possible to stay with a group this time and you’ll often get dropped from games for no apparent reason. When you do get to play with mates it’s quite good fun, but lacks PGR2’s quality net code and collision detection so the racing is never as close or as much fun – comparing cars and mods is good fun though, and the game seems to have a healthy Xbox Live following.

NFSU2 manages to be highly addictive and surprisingly deep without really doing anything ground breaking. The cars look well-modelled and shiny but are far from the most detailed this generation. The way the body kits and decals are integrated and allow you to mix and match them is superb - when racing online there is absolutely NO reason why your car should look like anyone else's. The tuning options really do make a difference and the cityscape is huge. But the game structure is a bit odd (a needless and brainless Fast & the Furious-esque back story is told in comic book style cut scenes, a hand drawn Kelly Brook being the only reason to watch them). The game’s structure is also a bit daft – and as with so many driving games you get your hands on the best cars and parts when the game is virtually over. The city is also deceptively basic, with lots of blurry textures that you don’t want to see too close up and invisible walls to stop you from exploring too much. Also driving into icons to select a race rather than finding a group of polygonal modders with their cars feels a bit basic, and the strangely different drag racing is a real oddity.