Burnout successor Danger Zone 2 is out now

Wrecktacular.

Released last year, Danger Zone was a modern remake of Burnout 3’s fabulous Crash Mode. But its engine lacked horsepower. For some bizarre reason, the entire game was framed as a virtual reality simulation, and yet you could only drive one car. The result was that Three Fields Entertainment somehow made ploughing into a highway intersection crammed with buses seem drab.

Just over a year later, and Three Fields have launched a follow-up that veers right into the path of the previous game’s problems. Most notably, the sequel resembles Burnout more closely, featuring sun-soaked outdoor highways fringed by palm trees, and an expanded vehicle roster that includes a Formula 1 car and an eighteen-wheeler lorry.

It seems Three Fields has shaken up the formula established by Criterion all those years ago. In Burnout, the slightest scrape of your bodywork against another car would trigger a crash, whereas Danger Zone 2 appears to let you shunt and slam a whole bunch of other vehicles before committing to full-on carnage.

Danger Zone 2 also makes a weird commitment to realism. Its highways are based upon real-life roads, and the game’s Steam page makes the eyebrow-raising promise of letting players cause carnage “Across 26 of the world’s most notorious accident blackspots,” which I can’t say is something I’ve ever personally hankered for. I prefer my vehicular destruction to be purely fictional, thanks.

Danger Zone 2 is currently navigating Steam’s virtual traffic-jam for £15.49/$20.