After the objectively mediocre first installment, one wouldn't expect the sequel to be such a big change. Although in many ways, especially if you watch gameplays, it is more of the same, it is so much polished for the most part. They fixed most of the track design issues from the previous installment, the impact detection and the car itself doesn't feel as fragile (although sometimes you can still crash after a low speed impact or just scratching something, but it's still way better), a lot more content with game modes that actually manage to contribute to the main game instead of being against it (I'm looking at you survival mode), as well as better AI, physics, graphics, etc. A little more refinement in this areas overall. This is really the first game on steroids, what it should have been in the first place... And first impressions with this game were amazing, for the first two hours of playing I thought it would be a PS2 classic, like an 8/10 game or something... But.... The problems that I gradually noticed at the beginning, as always, only got worse over time, to the point of taking away my desire to continue playing.
How is it possible? Even all or most of these problems that I will mention come from the previous game and arent as bad, and in fact I did not point them out in my previous review. Well, the issue is that the first game had so many flaws, much worse that I did not consider it necessary to point them out, because next to them it was like nothing lol.
I have already said that I am not a big fan of brake2drift, especially in old racing games where the drift, instead of being instantaneous, has a kind of delay and the drift angle does not feel natural at all. Considering that Burnout 2 has more sharp corners than its predecessor and more narrow roads, this poses a very serious problem where on many occasions I end up crashing into a traffic car that I cannot avoid, since when you are drifting you cannot change the direction of the drift easily. There are some cars that also have bad acceleration, which makes it difficult to recover from an impact or just by scratching the wall, alongside the AI rubberbanding that is still bad, this can cost you many races. And for some reason they decided in this game that to unlock everything you have to complete all the tournaments by coming in first place in each of the races.... and some of these tournaments can take half an hour or more!!! Can you imagine losing it to something as random as a simple crash near the end of the finish line in the last race?
I think Burnout 2 is, along with another racing franchise that I won't mention, the only racing game I've played that has masterpiece points, but they are horribly ruined by its driving system. How damn they ruined it!? I was having a lot of fun at the beginning, considering that in the end the strong thing in these games was always the adrenaline and reflexes, dodging thousands of cars in traffic at 200mph, but it is until you reach a corner where the fun ends.
