The presentation in the game is quite good. With the Expansion Pack, the title screen and menus are in high res, as are the preview pics of the car models you get to choose from. A total of nine cars and eight courses are available at the start of the game. The vehicles range from a 70's lowrider to a huge dumpster truck. And tracks are set all around the U.S., from frozen Alaska to sunny Florida.

The 1 Player Mode consists of Arcade, Quest, and Survival Mode. Arcade is combat between you and other computer controlled vehicles, Quest is a story mode that advances through simple text and pictures, and Survival Mode sees how many enemies you can destroy before being destroyed. The 2 Player Mode consists of Versus, Cooperative, and Quest. In Cooperative Mode you and a friend can team up to kill all the bad guys.

The frame rate moves at and below 30 fps in the normal res mode. If you have an expansion pack, gamers can select a high res mode that looks pretty good, but the frame rate does drop a bit. The textures aren't bad but the regular res of the game is a bit blurry.

Car combat is all about weapons, and V8:2 doesn't disappoint. Plenty of missiles, lasers, bombs, and special weapons are available. The bad part is they are scattered sparingly throughout the play fields. Looking for the special weapon can take a couple of minutes, and takes away from the attention to combat.

The music in V8:2 is pretty slick. Catchy 70's music is available throughout the game and different soundtracks can be chosen at anytime during play. The sound of explosions and hits are concrete and make destroying cars sound all the better.

Steering in V8:2 is way too touchy. Most of the adrenaline from the game comes from trying to steer your vehicle rather than the actual combat itself. In a car combat game it is pertinent to have excellent control of your vehicle to shoot and dodge, but the overly sensitive steering makes it difficult to aim at your opponents. The only vehicles that have adequate steering are the huge bus and dumpster truck vehicles.

The physics in the game are a little horrendous. The cars can't seem to handle the hilly terrain of the play fields, and many times driving up a steep hill at a high speed will have your car simply flop to its side. Another fault is the collision detection - there is none. If you speed up to try to ram your opponent, you'll hit once, but if you keep pressing the gas your car will go right through your opponents, forcing you to double back to try something else. One time I drove into the second story of a building and I happened to drive near a wall. The next thing I knew, my car flopped through the wall and landed on its side.

I don't mind a few glitches in a game as long as it doesn't cripple the gameplay. But the glitches in Vigilante 8 2nd Offense break both legs of any long lasting fun the game might have. First, I was in the two player versus mode when (for no apparent reason) I fell through the ground, began dropping from the sky, and landed nose first before landing back on four wheels. If that sounds crazy, I was driving around in my bus when I started bouncing up and down as if I had a hydraulics kit installed. And in another incident, my opponent's vehicle was turned over, and it took five minutes of button mashing and analog stick shaking to get the car back on its wheels.