I've been sat here for hours now. I'm trying to think of some clever words to kick off my review of FlatOut 2. See, this is the challenge when you're reviewing something - you have to captivate your audience without losing their interest in the very opener that you are casting your eyes over right this moment. It's the same with a videogame. You have to grip the player in the first ten minutes of that player booting it up. FlatOut 2 isn't short of that carrot-on-a-stick factor though; you only have to play it for five minutes and you're hooked - chasing that carrot though loads of destructible tracks. Before you know it, you're racing your cheap car, ready to crash into other cheap cars and really ruin other enemy players' chances of winning by driving them into the nearest tree. Ah, FlatOut - welcome back.

The first FlatOut, which made its underrated debut some time ago now, really did well with me. Scoring a well deserved nine out of ten with its unique charm; I could hardly fault the enjoyable experience FlatOut gave to me. Flash forward to the sequel - FlatOut 2 and you'll be glad to know that Bugbear has done it again. They've made a beauty out of a banger and they've turned a scrapper into a dapper - how could anybody refuse that?

Much like the first game, you start off with a set budget with which you buy three Derby cars to participate in Derby events. The three on offer are all in your price range, but the highest car in the range of three will fleece you completely of you budget, whereas the worst car of the three will leave you with some spending money to upgrade your ride. It's swings and roundabouts though, as whatever vehicle you pick, you're bound to go from strength to strength in the first of many Derby events. When you've picked a car, you're ready to race in the single player career mode. To burn your poorly formed rubber tires on the curvy dirt tracks of nature's very own forest.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is where I run out of inspiration. I had trouble with the intro, and now I've run out of fuel for the middle of this review. It's not easy, I assure you. So I went to check out the FlatOut review I wrote a while ago. In doing so, I discovered a very sad fact. Everything I put in the first FlatOut review could be pasted into this one. It's almost like FlatOut 2 is a carbon copy of the original, with a few added tweaks - but nothing else. The Nitro system hasn't changed at all, for example. Okay, if you've got a good formula then there's no point in making changes, but being awarded Nitro for crashing into objects dotted around the environment, crashing into other people and making leaps over bumps and jumps is something of a déjà vu.

And the races, like I put in the original review, always feel dangerously close. You're always either winning or coming close to winning by the skin of your teeth. You cross the finish line and the other players cross it in the next couple of seconds - you'll never win hands down and you'll never wipe the floor with the competition. That's something I liked in the first and still enjoy in the second. If it's not broken, you don't fix it, do you?

The environments, loaded with hundreds of objects, from fences, to barrels and little trees to large signs, can all be crashed into and destroyed. But when you crash into them, they don't all disappear. A good few always make their way onto the track and if you've foolishly crashed into everything the first lap around, you'll have some things to avoid during your consecutive loops around the course. It seems as if the courses have more of these objects to collide with, but the same concept is here, I praised it in the first, and I'll praise it again.

All the tips and tricks that I learnt in the first game - cutting corners with Nitro for example - could easily be applied to this game too. But the best addition to the FlatOut series, at least on the PS2, is the online mode. This meant I could now take my powerhouse of scrap online and race with other people across the globe, crashing, speeding and laughing as I go. The only small problem with this is that finding a game was like trying to find Apple's customer service department. In other words, it wasn't easy! I'm putting this down to FlatOut 2 being as underrated as the first title. It's a crying shame that FlatOut seems to be ignored when gamers are browsing the shelves of that game store, virtual or otherwise, and you can almost count on this title following the same fate as the last. Another shame - because when you do get a game online up and running, you can have a blast. Racing the AI is one thing, but going against real people, all with the same enthusiasm that you hold towards the game, is an amazing feeling.

Even if you don't venture online, FlatOut 2 can offer so much offline that it's worth the entry price regardless. You have your career mode, which is split up into three sections, Derby, Race and Street - each section giving you access to better (looking) cars and new tracks to race them upon, and each section is split up into about ten cups, with a few races to each cup, so you do the maths and you'll come up with the same answer as me - there's a lot of races to complete! And now there's a garage and a shop to buy and equip new parts for newly acquired cars; earning money and then spending it to advance is an old practice in gaming, but it's one that always keeps me happy.

Other single player modes come in the shape of Single Races - just like the career without the hassle, Single Stunts, which is home to many exciting mini-games, such as crashing, diving through the windscreen and getting your torso through the ring of fire in the appropriately titled Ring of Fire game. Single Event sees you racing special complicated tracks that loop back around, for four laps, and Single Derby - which is a mode I could play for hours, were it not for the harsh AI - is a game in itself, where you're forced into an arena with seven other opponents, to slam into each other and destroy the opposition. Last person with their car still standing wins! Multiplayer mode allows you to play races and events split screen, but people without extra controllers can have up to eight people passing the controller, taking it in turns to complete any of the twelve stunts (Ring of Fire, Ski Jump, Bowling, Baseball and many more) in any order, passing the controller as you go.

Graphically, the game has improved slightly - but the first FlatOut had some really nice looking visuals, so it's difficult to spot the improvements. I think the environments now carry a lot more items without any slowdown and the crashes look a little bit more dangerous too. The smart car denting is perfect and the rag doll physics when you come out of your car, head first through the windshield, are absolutely amazing. Character models haven't been improved, something that I wanted from the last time; I would have loved to have seen expressions of pain and spurts of blood as the character flew through the air and hit the electric fence in front. Still, this is overall a great graphical job from Bugbear and when you smash your car up, wreckage really does fly!

The sounds are still great, especially for all the crashing, smashing and revving - but off the courses and into the garage, we're treated to lots of recognisable indie, rock and heavy metal songs that compliment the menus, as well as the races themselves. The music is really fitting when you consider the overall objective of the game - which is to have fun and destroy cars. Perfect.

I might not have been able to compose the perfect intro, and I might have lost inspiration in the middle of this review, but I'm lacking no ideas for this closing paragraph. And besides, it'd be shame if all my reviews were perfect - this one was different and I'm sure many of you appreciate a little bit of diversity. FlatOut 2 isn't really much different from the original game, so those of you that don't like change, and were a bit perturbed by my unusual reviewing style, should lap up the excellent gameplay of FlatOut 2 and enjoy the relatively small changes. The game is still brilliant and the second coming gives another chance to all those people who wished they'd played the first - but there's something a little too familiar about it, and if you were refreshed by my change in approach, then you might find the lack of change in FlatOut 2 somewhat repetitive. Although this game could never really get repetitive, some folks will have to consider if the sometimes hidden tweaks are enough to warrant purchasing the sequel. It looks as if the FlatOut licence isn't about to take off like I hoped it would in my first review - but if Bugbear was to acquire the Vigilante licence and bring us a next-gen offering of that title, then they'd be laughing all the way to the bank. Still, I take my hat off to Bugbear, because they still have that spark and they have the potential to be fantastic, if the gaming public would only realise it.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).