New Extreme G on the way

With the likes of Burnout 2 and Xtreme G Racing under its belt, Acclaim has carved itself a reliable niche in the Stupidly Fast Racing game genre, so the news that the follow up to the latter, XGRA, is coming to PS2, Xbox and GameCube this August made our eyes bulge and faces wobble alarmingly at the prospect.

Last time out, Xtreme G Racing was one of the fastest, most intense racing games around, and XGRA (short for Extreme Gravity Racing Association) promises to improve in every area. The "all new" weapons system allows for "much more fluent gameplay", the scenery is "fully destructible", the crashes, bike and player damage have been "enhanced", there's variable weather in there, real-time commentary, a "fully pumped up" soundtrack, six new race types, as well as the addition of cars and sidecars which have "more weapons, less speed". Bigger, better, faster, more.

If Cheltenham Studios can nab the latest Renderware engine (as used in Burnout 2 to marvellous effect), then this stands a very good chance of being the ultimate futuristic racer. But on recent evidence, you lot don't care very much for games in this sub genre anymore; WipeOut Fusion underperformed, Quantum Redshift on Xbox sold disastrously badly despite being ace, and the last Xtreme G title hardly set the charts on fire either.

We're guessing this one will be shown off in a few months' time at E3, so expect our first impressions around that time.