You'll be able to pick from several paths, and the streets will be littered with much more debris than they were in the last game. We checked out the Big City and Forest levels, and we were happy to see that the racing is much less linear this time around. The environments in FlatOut 2 are all based on actual American locales, including everything from deserts to storm drains. Each environment would feature several different track configurations, but it always felt like more of the same. The first game mainly featured tracks that were in rural areas, and there wasn't very much variety from one race to the next. We're happy to report that while the first game featured a measly 16 vehicles, Bugbear's upped that number to 34 this time out.ДЄnother major improvement was made to the environments that you'll be racing in.

In addition to the typical demo derby entrants, there are now muscle cars, pickup trucks, and sports cars. You'll once again start out with banged-up beaters, but as you win more races, you'll be able to purchase nicer vehicles (which, of course, you'll turn into a beater by the end of the first lap). Like many racing franchises that take the 'more, more, more' approach when creating sequels, the first thing you'll notice about FlatOut 2 is that there is quite a few more vehicles this time around. Now, the team is hard at work on a sequel to the game (cleverly titled FlatOut 2), and they're promising us that it'll feature more of everything that made the first game such a blast.

Plus, it didn't hurt that the sight of a virtual ragdoll being thrown through a windshield and into a telephone pole never got old.

Bugbear Entertainment blended some solid racing action, highly destructive environments, and a bevy of imaginative mini-games to craft one of the year's most interesting racers. This made last year's FlatOut a bit of a surprise, especially when you consider that it was created by a developer based in the Finland. When it comes to recreating the look and feel of the American institution that is demolition derbies, many developers have crashed and burned.

Flatout 2 xbox