In World Racing 2, the follow-up to 2003’s Mercedes-Benz World Racing, developer Synetic delivers an enjoyable and graphically pleasing racing experience, without forcing anyone to sweat the details of a complex, and slow-to-progress career mode. But while the game does offer an enjoyable ride, it doesn’t do much to innovate away from the standard arcade-racer formula, leaving it in the shadow of some of the more revolutionary racing titles.

The career mode in World Racing 2 is comprised of over 120 missions. Missions are unlocked one at a time, by simply winning the previous mission. As a reward for completing them, you are given speedbucks, which are used as currency to buy new cars, customize cars that you already have, and to buy new tracks. The types of missions include traditional racing, knockout racing, where the car in last place after every lap gets knocked out of the race, timed races, and checkpoint racing. The speedbucks provide a large enough incentive to keep you plowing through missions, as there is tons of content to be unlocked. The game features over 90 unlockable vehicles from 17 different manufacturers, as well as a massive number of tracks set within 6 different geographical locations including Miami, Egypt, Italy, Hawaii, Hockenheimring, and a Race Center.

Once you hit the pavement, the freedom you have in the environment is damn near limitless. There are no invisible walls to crash into, or impassable guard rails. On the contrary, the guard rails are actually very passable, as there have been several occasions where I have flipped over them and even found myself grinding on top of them. That being said, the physics engine is what makes driving like a madman so fun in this game. There’s something about knowing that you’ll flip 10 times if you hit a bump at 250 mph that provokes you to aim directly for that bump. Your car might come out of it with a few dents and some missing paint, but you’ll definitely feel that it was worth it afterwards.

The game also offers a lot of customizable settings to suit your preferred play style. You have the ability to manipulate the physics of the game by going into the options menu and switching whether you want the game to play more like an arcade racer, or a simulator. But to be honest, both the simulator and the arcade settings feel very much alike, and if the game had to be classified under any settings, it would definitely be categorized as an arcade racer. The game gives off a feeling closer to that of San Francisco Rush as opposed to Gran Turismo, especially with goodies such as nitro boosts packed into the game. And even though you do have the option to turn off nitro boost to make the game feel more like a simulator, who honestly wants to turn off nitro boost? Not me.

One of the best aspects of World Racing 2 is the extreme amount of visual detail that can be seen in the environment and on the cars, especially when the car becomes damaged. Doors fly off, windows begin to crack, paint gets shredded, and basically your car turns to crap. The combination of loose physics and excellent graphics provide a sort of ocular orgasm if your settings are turned up high enough. But while the graphics are nothing less than awesome, the game is a bit lacking in the audio department. The sound affects aren’t that bad, but I was a little disappointed with the whole 12 tracks of music the game has to offer.

While the game undoubtedly provides a good dose of fun, there are still a few areas where it could use some improvement. To begin, the game penalizes you for trying to smash into and immobilize your opponents during a race. I know I speak for a lot of people when I say that physical rivalry between enemies in an arcade-racer is something that should be encouraged rather than discouraged. It’s somewhat of an annoyance having to go out of your way to make sure not to hit your enemies in order to earn more speedbucks. Luckily, the penalty isn’t that severe, and it probably won’t stop most people from demolishing the competition regardless.

Have you ever made a mistake in a racing game that cost you the race, as well as valuable minutes of your precious time? Of course you have. And now those "cool" mistakes that piss you off are thrown right back in your face with WR2’s action replay feature. This feature takes moments in the race that the game deems to be worthy enough of being replayed, and briefly cuts away from the race to show you the replay. At first, I thought it was a pretty neat feature. But later on when every other crash becomes a replay, the whole thing begins to just get old.

Although World Racing 2 doesn’t offer much in the way of standing out as anything spectacular, it’s still a worthy buy, and a genuinely fun racing game. I’d confidently recommend this game to anyone with a computer and some free time. When everything is taken into consideration, World Racing 2 earns itself a B-.