Asphalt Urban GT 2 takes Gameloft’s flagship racing game to the next level. It adds more vehicles. It adds more gaming modes. It adds more licensing (The Pussycat Dolls, Moby). And it adds a career mode where you can buy new vehicles and tuning kits in addition to unlocking tracks and game modes.

The number of licensed vehicles has been increased to include the likes of the Lamborghini Murcielago, Nissan 350Z, Mercedes SLR McLaren, Dodge Viper SRT-10, Hummer H3, Aston Martin DBR9, Pontiac 1967 GTO and the Golf GTI MKV. This range of cars really covers everything from the exotic to muscle cars and those cars that you won’t worry about parking on the street. Gameloft has also thrown in two motorbikes: the Ducati 999 R and Kawasaki VN 2000.

Visually, you can discern all the vehicles from one another due to the great on screen renditions of the vehicles themselves, except possibly the motorcycles which I can’t really tell from one another. Gameloft continues to put gorgeous backdrops in the background and some pretty detailed (although jaggy) road terrain. Everything moves at a clip pace to give you a sense of speed when you’re driving on track. However, the thing that does take a hit are the 3D street lamps, buildings and street signs; basically anything that can’t be a picture in the far off distance and isn’t the 3D car itself. Freeway signs, for example, are reduced to a green box with a bar at the bottom to indicate writing.

You won’t be spending much time reading signs and looking at the scenery though. Gameloft has added new gaming modes to complement getting first at the finish line. Evolution lets you race on urban tracks with regular traffic to win money and unlock items. Duel lets you race against one opponent for a higher purse. Beat’em all is like a destruction derby where the goal is to wreck other cars by crashing into them. Throughout all the game modes, you’ll have to deal with a police presence. If you’re bumping into cars and wrecking them, you’ll up your wanted meter which will send police cruisers coming your way. If somehow you’re evading capture or you even manage to wreck the police car, the police will begin setting up obstacles and even send a helicopter to come track you.

When you get busted, you have to end up paying a fine but usually if you end up wrecking some cars and finish the race in a decent position, you’ll actually make your money back. Everything is pretty inflated as I finished second in my first race, took about $9000 worth of fines but still made $22,000 at the end. There’s even one mode called Cop Chase where the goal is for you to take a police cruiser and smash up street racers.

The artificial intelligence can be fairly annoying. They’ll bump up against you to try to slow you down. It almost seems as if all the competitors are trying to work against you because even if the second place car is about to blow up from too much contact, they’ll still come at you. If I were them, I’d just let the other person pass (I was just looking to pass them, not destroy them) rather than forsake my place in the race.

The races are generally over before you notice these deficiencies and the police do add another dimension to keep you occupied. It might be the handset I am playing on but I found GT 2 to be quieter than its predecessors. For one thing, the original game had engine whines that seem to have given way to silence here.

Eight tracks are included in the game and there are so many unlockable kits and cars that GT 2 will stay on your handset for a very long time. Plus, with the addition of motorcycles, the game has another race style to keep you busy. Overall, GT 2 takes the basic race concept and expands it further with so much material that you’ll most likely look at the third Asphalt GT title before you get bored of what’s in this game. Definitely something racing fans should check out.