Destruction Derby 2

"Yeah, totally destruction !"

If you like stock car racing, this is your game. The idea of making a stock car race for a console is incredible, but even more incredible is the fun it makes to drive your car together with 20 psycho-computer-drivers directly into the scrap yard.

Graphics: 8

Car design: 7
O.k., this game has not perfectly designed cars like in GrandTourism. But hey, did you ever see a GT car flying 100m through the air? I guess not. Did you ever see a GT car with two lost wheels? Destruction Derby 2 offers all these things. Of course there exists only one kind of car in different colours, but this car is totally ''destroyable''. Whenever you hit the enemy, or the barrier your car alters. At first you loose yor reflectors, then your hood/trunk, and finally your wheels. Everytime you hit something your car looses debris that will be blown in the wind. And if you lost for example your right wheel at the back, the on the tarmac scratching car-part causes sparks.
Track design: 9
There are 7 different tracks and four arenas. Especially the tracks are very cool. They contain jumps, narrow parts, huge start/finish lines... Everything is well designed, there are trees standing around the tracks, there´s always a photorealistic background or details like animated commercials.

Sound: 9

Music: 10
The game has ca.7 great rock-tracks for the background music. The music is very high quality and fits perfectly to a stock car race. You evan can throw the DD2-CD into your CD-player to listen to the tracks. That gives you a cool driving feeling especially when you listen to the tracks during driving through the city (Suddenly I get the desire to ram every car out of my way).
SFX: 7
Well, there are not that much sound effects. There is the very cool Motor-sound, immediately before the race starts, the driving noise, squealing tires, and the sound of crashing cars. Nothing special, but well done.

Gameplay: 8

Stock car - mode: 8
This is the ''normal'' mode. You get a certain amount of points after every race depending on your place. There are four leagues, everyone consisting of five drivers. At the beginning you start, of course, in the lowest league, and if you are on the first rank after four races you will be promoted to the next league. In every new league you discover a new track. This mode is really cool especially because of the huge amount of 19 enemies, and the fact that you have to concentrate on demolished cars standing directly on the track.
Wrecking racing: 7
The aim of the wrecking racing championship is really original. Like in stock car mode there a four leagues, but you´re not driving for points gained through good racing results, you are driving for ''wrecking points''. Every time you hit another car you get a certain amount of points, depending on what happened to the rammed car. If you destroy it, you get 25 points for example. If you manage it that the car you hit twists 360 degrees you get 100 points. This mode is quite cool, but also very difficult, and soon gets boring. During the race you always have to mind your destruction-o-meter that shows you the condition of your different car parts. Because when you wreck your car, the race is over and you can´t collect any more points.
Totally Destruction: 8
Wow. Totally weird. You select one of four destruction-arenas, usually a great tarmac-bowl, and when the countdown is over, 19 cars try to destroy you. This is great fun, especially because of the great replay-mode, that shows the complete race from different camera positions. The aim of this mode is to survive as long as you can. So you can play this with your friends, because the computer counts the time you survived.

Final Score: 8

DD2 is a very cool and original game. If you don´t like racing games at all, than you will not like this game either. But everyone who likes to play a racing game from time to time, and is bored of all those super-realistic simulations where the cars can not be destroyed because the car manufacturers do not want to see their brand new cars flying through the air, then DD2 is the right choice for you.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/15/02, Updated 08/15/02