Extreme-G 2 is the follow up to one of the most cherished games for the Nintendo 64 entertainment console. The game involves futuristic motorbikes racing for the top spot in some futuristic world. In a similar vein to the first game, this game revolves around going as fast you can as the pumping techno soundtrack beats on and on. While the speed is a high point of the game it also brings into light the issue of control. As the scenery rushes by you will spend a lot of your time grinding into walls and bumping into other opponents.
This is a fairly common scenario. You will boot up the game and select your vehicle from the character selection. The variety here isn't too drastic, although in this instalment you actually get to view your drivers as opposed to simply picking a vehicle. Immediately the music starts kicking in and before you know it the race has started. The difficulty isn't very hard and you could basically do decent on most races (If not finish first) simply by pressing accelerate. Although you shield levels diminish they basically serve as a buffer. This makes sliding along the walls a simple slow down instead of the race crippling effect they have in other racing games (The new burnout comes to mind).
The racing environments themselves are quite
varied. The graphics are surprisingly well done considering the limitations and slow down doesn't ever seem to draw in. Many of the race tracks are similar in having a main track with many branches. As this does help bring up the intensity of races as you are always in such close proximity of each other it does have a negative side effect in making many of the races very linear. I do however appreciate the developers visions of race structure for in a number of multilayer races I have played in the end result was extremely frantic and most of all fun.
The music really helps to achieve the mood of this piece. The tempo of the music is just as fast as many of the races themselves. The music never detracts from the game but helps you get into it. I never found it to be annoying despite having little interest in the techno genre of music myself. All in all the music fit just right in with the game and I couldn't ask more of it.
