I wanted to be a pilot as a kid, but I gave up on that dream when I realized that I had absolutely zero sense of direction and flying a plane was extremely demanding in that regard. A quick google search tells me that a flight from LA to Rome will end up in Tunisia if it's just one degree off course!

This game is that 'fun fact' illustrated in visceral and brutal terms. It takes the worst parts of the worst track designs in the first game and builds its entire repertoire of tracks with those design principles - narrow snaky tracks, 'death' pits everywhere, and an abundance of cul-de-sacs you can get stuck in. The vehicles are noticeably faster but handle far more slippy and slidey than in the previous game, and the AI drives nearly flawlessly every time, which makes the entire thing an exercise in frustration.

A real shame, as there are some improvements in the general format here - the game allows you to move on to the next track whether you place highly or not, and there is a time attack mode which lets you practice specific tracks that you might be stuck on. I also think it's pretty cool in a game of this age that there seems to be no rubberbanding and there seems to be some level of random variance to the finishing positions of your opponents. This shows that the devs were probably aware of some of the issues with the first game and tried to take steps to correct them but THE TOILET BOWL LEVEL WHAT WERE THEY THINKING