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Games: Danger Zone 2’s motorised mayhem improves on original in every way

Danger Zone 2 – you can hear Kenny Loggins hanging in the oily breeze
Danger Zone 2 – you can hear Kenny Loggins hanging in the oily breeze Danger Zone 2 – you can hear Kenny Loggins hanging in the oily breeze

Danger Zone 2 (Multi)

By: Three Fields Entertainment

THE ultimate early noughties carry-out game, Burnout 3's Crash Mode appealed to the lizard brain of motorway accident rubber-neckers, where the only rule was to slam your ride into oncoming traffic and watch the destruction dollars mount up.

Founded by Burnout veterans, Three Fields distilled its simple pleasures into last year’s downloadable Danger Zone. And even though a meagre budget couldn't extend to licensing its 80s rock namesake, you could still hear Kenny Loggins’s paean to macho irreverence hanging in the oily breeze.

While Danger Zone was hampered by a sterile VR test-chamber setting, round two drags its paean to the pile-up into the great outdoors, with country roads and motorways given the sun-kissed palette of Sega’s heyday. So buckle your sphincter for a breakneck two-fingered salute to the insurance industry as you launch your car into unsuspecting traffic and destroy anything of monetary value.

Structurally identical to the original, success comes from figuring out the optimal area for carnage. Cause enough damage fire and Smashbreakers will turn your wreck into a literal car bomb, letting you guide its chrome carcass into more traffic, nabbing cash pick-ups to further rack up the points. While on the face of it, Danger Zone 2 is about all-out petrol-headed carnage, in reality this is a puzzle game, and leaderboard-worthy scores require a keen eye as you plot the most destructive route on the sniff for that elusive Grand Slam bonus.

Apart from the real-world setting, the biggest new addition is Run Up challenges, where each level has an addition objective, such as taking out set numbers of a particular vehicle en route to the pyrotechnic payoff. It all adds up to a giddy thrill-ride as you chain boosts together, your back glistening with brine, directing cars that you’ve run off the road into further catastrophe. There’s also more variety to your garage, with sports cars, taxis and lorries bringing their own heft and strategy.

At a budget £14.99 ask, expect around three hours of choreographed carnage across its 23 zones, though there’s immense replayability in clambering the online leaderboards. Danger Zone 2’s nitro-burning, motorised mayhem improves on the original in every way and is the closest we’ve come to a new Burnout in years – though maybe next time around we can finally get some Loggins on the soundtrack.