I just can’t resist. Burnout 2: Point of Impact is the best available racing game on the GameCube, period.

Burnout 2 for the Nintendo GameCube has recently added a gaming genre within the realm of racing games, impact racing. Like the name suggests, “impact” racing doesn’t compare with the word “simulation,” so you can expect many Gran Turismo fans to look down upon the title at first. However, from my experience with this game, I would highly recommend to many of those fans to start expanding their gaming horizons and check out this racing title, which is probably the fastest street racing game on the market today.

Burnout 2 is similar to its predecessor in that a sense of great speed overwhelms the player. The game is entirely unique in its racing flavor, where the blazing speed rarely becomes a factor within winning a race. Burnout 2 is known for its gut-wrenching and sometimes highly exaggerated crashes. The racer provides gamers with some of the most amazing crashes ever seen in a video game. The physics engine within the title shines like a Ferrari racing in the hot California sun.

What exactly makes Burnout racing?

“Totally unbelievable street racing,” is only half of what most gamers would think about the game. In the reality of the game, “without laws, limits or reaction time,” shapes the true intent of Acclaim when they developed the arcade racing title.

By playing only a few seconds of the game, Burnout newbies will discover a small, yet important red “Burnout Boost” meter at the bottom left of their screens. This meter is what the game is all about. The term “Burnout” refers to totally depleting the boost meter during a boost. If players are lucky enough to deplete the entire meter without getting hit, the bar will refill to about 90% back. Obviously different from other racing titles, players must drive their cars on opposite way roads, and not just avoid hitting other cars, but actually missing them by inches. With drifting, road jumps, opposite traffic flow, and “car misses” intact, your boost meter increases rapidly. As soon as the bar fills up, gamers press R to use their boost, or in racer terms, nitrous-oxide system or NOS. Anybody up for some “Fast and the Furious”?

If you continue to drive dangerously and avoid smashing into traffic, the boost meter will gradually continue to increase, hence giving racers more and more boosts, and more crashes. The sense of speed in Burnout 2 is highly realistic because it gives you that light-hearted feeling for the risk of crashing. Crashing into other cars is fun, but it takes away your full boost meter if you were to meet bumper to bumper.

In most racing games, crashes usually appear over-exaggerated and too simplistic. However, Burnout 2 provides some of the most realistic crashes ever seen in a video game. Not only would crashes do tremendous damage to your car, but to others as well. Two cars crashed in the middle of a T-junction often cause chain reactions where several other cars, even big-rigs, become a part of the mess, and it isn’t pretty. You’ll see cars flying through the air with debris, large SUVs vigorously pressing their brakes before hitting another car, and even car sparks!