Need for Speed Underground 2 Updated Hands-On

Need for Speed Underground 2 is the upcoming sequel to last year's impressive new twist on the venerable Need for Speed series. The game builds on the street racing approach that developer EA Canada took with the longtime franchise and it aims to offer an overall richer experience than its predecessor. We had the chance to get a look at an updated Xbox version of the game so we could try our hand at the various race modes. While the game wasn't 100 percent complete, what we played showed an impressive amount of polish that bodes well for the upcoming release.

Need for Speed Underground 2 is already looking quite polished.

Need for Speed Underground 2 will offer a variety of racing modes outside of its meaty and time-intensive career option. If you don't feel like clocking in a chunk of time building up your career, you can try your hand at seven other one-shot races to either hone your skills or have a bit of fun. You'll be able to choose from circuit, sprint, drag, drift, street x, underground racing league races, and outrun. Although many of those modes were in the last game, they have undergone some tweaks for NFSU2 and now with the additions of street x, underground racing league, and outrun competitions the game offers an engaging and varied experience outside of the career mode's roughly 150 different events.

The career mode will boast roughly 150 different events.

Circuit and sprint races are dashes to the finish against a selection of opponents that are pretty much par for the course for a racer. The twist to them in NFSU 2 is the presence of traffic and the layout of the courses, which add a new level of challenge. Traffic is also a factor in the drag races in which you can participate. The mode's already challenging multitasking (keeping tabs on when to shift while making sure the car stays ahead of the competition and avoids oncoming traffic) is taken up a notch by a much more demanding traffic system. Plan on some unintentionally spectacular homages to Burnout 3 during some of your races, as traffic crops up when you least want to see it during some of your runs. Drift races, loved and loathed by players of last year's game, depending on their rate of success in the mode, are back with some fresh elements. The races will now take place in stadium-style tracks as in the original NFSU, as well as on normal tracks throughout the city, which include the dreaded traffic. The stadium races will also feature opponents on the track, and you'll be required to wrap up your business before an onscreen timer counts down, which can be challenging. The street x races are tight runs against aggressive opponents on fairly short tracks that require quite a bit of skill to navigate. The underground racing league runs are more advanced competitions that are pretty demanding in terms of skill--just something to note, if you want to avoid embarrassing yourself. This isn't too surprising, as in the proper game the races are invitation-only competitions that require you to have a certain level of reputation in order to warrant an invite. Finally, the outrun races are a game of cat and mouse that you trigger by finding specific drivers to compete against in the city in free-roaming driving sequences. Once initiated, you'll be required to not only catch up to your competitor, but also get ahead of him and maintain a certain distance in order to win--quite a tall order when you're weaving through traffic.