If taking more time to get to races than it does to complete races is your style, dive right in.
Underground 2 picks up where Underground left off. When you start you've just gotten your car trashed by a bunch of thugs and aim to get revenge. Unlike Underground, which used full-motion videos for cutscenes, Underground 2 uses a comic book-like idea for the cutscenes. Not only is this idea ridiculous, but it's also poorly done, especially with the horrible and negative dialogue. Other than that, the idea of Underground 2 is plain and simple: race and get revenge on the thugs that wrecked your car. In Underground 2 you'll start with a pretty slow car but gradually you'll get much faster cars and upgrades for them. The car physics themselves are pretty good, most of the cars have their own feel to them. After about three to four hours into the game you'll be driving in some pretty fast cars.
The sense of speed in Underground 2 is alright, but it's only really good when you reach really high speeds or use nitrous. So don't expect to get the same rush of adrenaline in Underground 2 that Underground delivered. The racing concept in Underground 2 is pretty similar to its predecessor. The majority of the time you'll spend in Underground 2 you'll take part in regular circuit and sprint races along with drag and drift events. There are also a couple racing "spin-offs" in Underground 2. There's outrun, which is where you approach a racer from behind while free-roaming, press a button and try to ditch them for cash. There's also Street X, basically it's just a regular race on drift courses. Then there's the URL's which stands for Underground Racing League races. These are regular races on Gran Turismo-like courses.
While the overall racing experience in Underground 2 is good, it's unfortunately outweighed by its open-city environment. This idea seem like a smart move at first, but it actually works out miserably. While some might freak and fall in love with this addition the vast majority will likely loathe it. In order to progress through Underground 2 you'll need to traverse the city races and shops and then race through them. This idea might not sound so bad but since you'll need to race to specific areas in the city; sometimes on the opposite side of the city you're on it really gets in the way of the racing. To make matters worse, when you're looking for a shop to customize your car most of the shops won't be highlighted on your map until you find them.
The graphics in Underground 2 are good, no doubt, but don't really seem as good as Underground. Like its predecessor, Underground makes good use of lighting and detail on the car models. However, the environments take a major hit from the detail focused on the cars, especially since the city is pretty un-interactive. Fortunately, the framerate in Underground is pretty smooth, especially after how rough the framerate in the first one was. Overall, the graphics in Underground 2 are good, but the detail is rather lacking, especially on the environments.
There are just under thirty cars in Underground 2, ranging from your everyday Honda Civic to the highly coveted Nissan Skyline. The car list isn't too shabby, but most of them would've been better off on the drawing board, especially since you can only customize twenty cars for multiplayer use. Three cars that have absolutely no innovation behind them are the SUV's, which are the Hummer H2, Cadillac Escalade and Lincoln Navigator. These SUV's handle like crap and are incredibly slow. At least the car list is pretty well balanced in a way that certain gamers will have certain preferences towards the cars.
One area that Underground 2 surpasses the first Underground is in its sound. While the sound effects in Underground 2 are pretty standard the crash sound effects are a nice touch, even though the cars don't take any damage. The cars themselves sound pretty good. While the cars might not have a punch-like tone to them the game does a great job of varying the sound effects with each performance upgrade. Unlike Underground, which had a horrific soundtrack, Underground 2's soundtrack is well composed. Not only does the soundtrack compliment the game pretty nicely but most of the songs aren't half bad either. You'll find metal artists like Mudvayne and Skindred and rap artists like Xzibit and Snoop Dog.
One of the huge attributes of Underground was its huge and fully-featured customization system. Underground 2 also has a large customization system, but it's also much bigger than the first. Like in the first, you'll find performance upgrades like nitrous oxide and suspension and visual upgrades like body kits, rims, vinyls and more. You can also slap on TV's, speakers and stereo systems in your car, although they don't do much to your car as you can't see them when racing. While the customization in Underground 2 is certainly colossal it does seem a bit unorganized, as it feels like a drag putting some upgrades on your car.
Underground 2 is a good game, but against its predecessor and the expectations it comes up short. It's certainly fun to play Underground 2, when you get to race that is. However, if the open-city environment had been executed with even a bit of real consideration the game could've been a whole lot better.