As a games reviewer I'm certain I'm losing my credibility. When I first took this gig up, I specifically said "I don't play flight sims, driving games or sports games." The brilliant air-combat game IL-2 came along making my claim dubious, and now comes my newest addiction, Need For Speed Underground 2, and quite frankly I'm looking like a real liar. If a decent sports game comes along now, nobody will ever believe me again! So we've established two things: 1. I do play flight sims and driving games and 2. NFSU 2 is really addictive.

Need for Speed is one of the longest established series of driving games ever in the history of video gaming. The original Need for Speed games pitted gleaming machines with six figure prices against each other in a battle of the world's top luxury and sporting cars. Always fast paced, always accurate technically, there was still something missing; a hard to define vital element that stopped a lot of people getting into these games.

This must have clicked with somebody at THX, developers of the newest Need for Speed games. It was the simple factor of proximity. Driving Ferraris and Jaguars on a computer might be moderately fun but, let's face it, you'll probably never even come within spitting distance of one of those cars in real life, let alone drive one. This is where NFSU2 (and the original Underground) made the greatest improvement; the cars in these games are cars any chump with a handful of cash can own. They're cars you see on the road every day and they're within reach of the average Joe… these cars have a mental proximity to the player. Cars like the Honda Civic, Toyota Celica, Ford Focus, Nissan 240SX, Subaru WRX STI and others are the fare for this game. Even a bum like me has owned a Celica once (albeit a 1978 model).

The game is centered on Bayview City, a digital city very similar to Hollywood (giant city name on the mountain included). Unlike the other Need for Speed games, where you just used menus to select your race, in NFSU 2 you drive around the city looking for challenges. Most are shown on your GPS locater map and some are hidden. Once you're in a race, you actually race around the city itself, not a pre-built circuit. Aside from giving the game a huge dose of realism, it's also a lot more forgiving than previous incarnations; city roads are usually quite wide, so staying on the track is easier. There are eight race modes in all, including drags, circuits, straights, cross-X's (a kind of mini-circuit), slide circuits and more, with a win giving you much-needed cash for working on your car.

Hotting up your car by modding the engine, suspension, fuel systems and other parts is an essential element to the game, just as important as the racing itself in fact. Even Grandma's Civic can be a beastly machine with the right mods and a good paintjob. Once you've improved the internals of the car, it's time to spend cash on the outside. Give your car a spoiler, side skirts, front and rear body kit, roof scoop and a few vinyl pictures for artistic effect, and suddenly you can barely recognise the car underneath. You may even have trouble realising there's a car there at all, but for the loud vroom vroom noises.

This is the other addictive side to this game; to earn access to more parts and mods, you need to win more races. It literally becomes addictive, like collecting Pokemon cards; you gotta, just gotta catch 'em all. Like opening a new packet of cereal to see what toy you'll get, it's always a surprise. Will this win give me access to the spoilers I want? How about that a new transmission? The sheer number of modifications you can make to your car, especially visual ones, is staggering.

The racing itself is awesome. Most of the race modes are great fun, though the URL (Underground Racing League) mode is tiring and feels more like a chore than anything else. Otherwise, the game conveys the real feeling of speed to the player. These are all real cars and they handle like real ones, albeit real ones with very powerful (and probably illegal in the UK) engines. Difficulty levels are well spaced; easy is very easy and is suitable for blind chimpanzees, medium is a good challenge but generally still beatable as long as you keep focused and hard… well it's hard, isn't it?

Though this game gives you the feeling of a fast car without the cost, it can't give you the feeling of a fast graphics card the same way. If you want the graphics, you'll need to dish out for a very capable piece of kit. My 256mb Geforce 4 plays the game quite nicely on about 75% graphics detail. You'll need something crazy like a Radeon 9800 connected to 3Ghz of CPU to get perfect smoothness with all the details. If you can manage that though, woah baby are you in for a treat. The detail of the cars is great, but the detail of the city is mind blowing. The makers of Grand Theft Auto will really have to work hard to catch up; this city is more detailed in looks, design and size than Vice City ever was.

Oh, did I come all this way and not mention a plot? That's probably because there isn't one. The story is summed up thus: there's this bad guy who wants to win all the races and you have to win all the races instead. Add some bad acting and you'd have a perfect script for a Keanu Reeves movie.

There are other problems too; namely the music. The original NFSU, while nowhere near as good as this sequel, had brilliant music. I have no idea how they made it so relevant to drive illegally to. NFSU 2 however contains music from such spectacularly untalented artists such as Mr Snoop Dogg. Aside from the inspired choice of Spiderbait's cover of "Black Betty", almost all the music is either homeboy rap or screaming heavy metal, neither of which suits the game. Other than that though, I have nothing negative to say about the game.

It is a shame that something as important and impacting as the music is a big letdown, but the pure fun and addictiveness of Need For Speed: Underground 2 more than makes up for it. This has quickly become my favourite and most often played game - and considering my statement a few months back that "I don't play driving games," that alone should tell you all you need to know about this outstanding racer.

Reviewed by Steve Rosenthal for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).