Aaargh! Remember that? Destruction Derby was one of the first wave of PlayStation games and it went straight for the ten-year-old in all of us, the one who whacked his Matchbox cars with a hammer to simulate a gruesome ten-car pile-up. In other words, everyone who now sits back and mutters "Christ, I wish I hadn't whacked my Matchbox cars with a hammer to simulate a gruesome ten-car pileup. They'd be worth a fortune now. Bollocks!" Just as spring follows winter and paparazzi follow fat-arsed ginger princesses, sequel follows success, and Destruction Derby, for all its faults, was a success. Taxing their marketing department to the limit, Psygnosis has called its follow-up Destruction Derby 2, which in the modern style of sequels is essentially the same, only more so. The objective of the game is identical -- drive a car around very fast until something breaks -- but is now presented with more panache.

Go, go!
There are essentially two modes of play in Destruction Derby 2. Stock Car Racing is yer basic Damon Hill-style dash round a circuit, where winning is everything... but let's face it, if that was all you wanted, you'd have bought Formula 1 instead. Wrecking Racing is the meat of the game, where points are awarded not on the basis of where you finish, but on how much work you've generated for Kwik-Fit. The more damage you cause to the 19 other cars on the track, the higher you rate.

There are seven tracks, ranging from the soporific Pine Hills to the thoroughly demented Ultimate Destruction Speedway, as well as four 'bowls', which are essentially gladiatorial arenas for brum-brums. In these, you just keep driving and ramming into people until your car looks like the unlucky mafia boss's ride in Goldfinger. The tracks are longer than in the original, and as a result are more biased towards actual racing than car-type combat -- there are very few places where you can engineer a really good T-bone collision, an odd choice by the programmers given the game's motor-barney USP.

Steer, steer!
However, the tracks do look a lot better than in the original -- the Vegas-like Liberty City is a particular stand-out -- and the kinetics of the cars have been massively improved as well. Having obviously taken a good long look at The Need For Speed, Psygnosis has now arranged for the crashing cars to flip, spin and generally hurtle through the air like playing cards shuffled by the limbularly-challenged bad guy from The Fugitive. A 20-car pile-up is a thing of beauty to watch, and if you're actually using the in-car view when it happens... let's just say you might need some air-sickness pills.

Brake, brake!
On the downside, how is it that Wipeout 2097 gets The Chemical Brothers and Orbital, while Destruction Derby 2 is saddled with sub-MTV Rocks! plank-spanking that could most charitably be described as utter shite? Presumably it's got something to do with the fact that WipeOut (and its 'choonz') was better received than the original Destruction Derby pretty much everywhere except the homeland of Beavis and Butt-head, so Psygnosis are biasing DD2's presentation towards its target market. Whatever. It still doesn't alter the fact that the screeching cacophany of axe abuse is about as welcome as chilli sauce on the todger. Off!

Dent, dent!
Another nuisance is the scoring system in Wrecking Racing. It sounds simple enough to get points (based on how much you spin your rivals), but because the track design makes it very hard to let you justify those Animal House screams of "Ramming speed!", a massive crash involving every car in the race might still only net you ten points. Things are just as suspect in normal racing -- one tiny tap from behind and you go wide on a corner, then voom! -- 17 cars shoot past in a bunch. There's also no rear view mirror, which could have given you prior warning for a good ol' mashing.

In essence, Destruction Derby 2 does what its predecessor did, only better. But it still suffers from many of the same faults. You can wind up completely out of control for long periods through no fault of your own, leading to joypad-mauling frustration and annoyed neighbours, and the action is pretty simplistic after a while.

Developers Reflections has also taken the bizarre step of making the other cars much faster and better at taking corners than you, thereby making it nigh on impossible to catch them up quickly. It would have been far better if there was some form of "booster" function as in F1. After all, DD2 is a contact sport, and nobody cares about the actual racing. DD2 is an ideal game for relieving short bursts of road rage, but for a longer-term challenge, Formula 1 takes the flag.

Verdict: 82%