It's interesting to think about improvements to a series that came out as a launch game with the PS2 over a year ago, and had very few flaws even then. I went home with a copy of Smuggler's Run on October 26 and still remember the thrill of driving around those huge environments for the first time. Well, it's a honeymoon all over again with Smuggler's Run 2: Hostile Territory.

There were some issues in the first game over slowdown, and these have been reduced considerably. The music seems to actually have come down in quality, as did the main voiceover. Okay, that woman and her 'Give it to me, baby' approach was downright corny at times, but she added an element of humor that Hostile Territory is lacking. The idea seems to be that you're somewhere between a crook and a soldier and ex-military smugglers in the Far East are more deadpan than guys who just smuggle stuff across the Mexican border. I miss the lighter side of the voice talent, but Rockstar did a nice job creating cut-scenes that carry the spirit of the game. You can view these movies at key places in the story, and the use of film and live actors is a nice alternative to computer animation. A new addition to the H.U.D is a rear-view mirror, which makes a ton of sense for a game that usually has a literal army in hot pursuit of you. The environments are as good as or better than we saw in the first game, with some added interaction. Objects seem to react more realistically, surfaces 'feel' more like you'd expect, and the weather effects are outstanding. The first mission at night in a heavy rain is impressive for how well it recreates the experience of being blinded by a downpour and trying to pick out landmarks in the dim light to just stay on course. The same is true for dense wooded areas and high grass, such as in Vietnam. More of a good thing.

All the great action that made SR a hit at launch is preserved for Hostile Territory, but the missions seem to flow better and with more consistent scaling of difficulty. The first game failed to build a smooth learning curve, creating a few missions early on that were too hard. Hostile Territory felt almost too easy at first for me, since I knew what I was supposed to be doing, but by the midpoint of the game things had heated up appropriately. The Turf War mode is the story of your progression through the ranks as you prove yourself during operations for The Colonel in some of the toughest places on Earth. If driving in frozen, rocky wasteland while Russian Army forces shell you sounds tricky, wait until Vietnam where you fly through thickets of bamboo and try to avoid hitting a water buffalo at 120mph! Sometimes, the missions are as simple as picking up cargo in one place and dropping it off in another, but thrown into the mix are missions where you'll have to follow and destroy an enemy vehicle, scrap with local gangs for possession of merchandise or race to lose the cars behind you so as to conceal your base of operations. More focused modes like Crooks n Smugglers intensify the competition between you and the rival gangs to pick up packages. As the goods drop, you'll race to be the one to make the pick-up and drop-off, but as enemy cars crash into you they can steal your stuff and beat you to the punch. Luckily, you can do the same to them. In this mode, along with Loot Grab, which is different in that a bunch of packages drop at once, you'll have a team composed of your vehicle and two others. You can pick any combination of three, but certain cars or trucks do best in certain spots on the team. Smaller vehicles are made for speed but lack durability, so it's always smart to pair them with brawny, big trucks. These trucks do great for defense and blocking, but don't expect to outrun anything when you're driving one. Bomb Tag takes the idea of stealing cargo and reverses it with a bomb in the mix. There's a ticking package and nobody wants to carry it. Crashing into another car gives them the bomb, and then you'll want to be far away when it explodes. This mode is still really about points, since getting blown up zeros your score. The final single-player competitive mode is Checkpoint Race. As the name suggests, this is almost pure racing, except for the bizarre locations and rigged up cars. The racer through the checkpoints and across the finish line first wins the round.

Two different multiplayer modes are available, either Competitive or Cooperative. In Competitive, you can play through Checkpoint Race or Turf Wars Mode to see who's the better smuggler. Depending on how competitive you feel, there's also a Joy Riding Mode that lets you cruise around opened areas and just explore. This can be a good way to plan routes through extra difficult areas or try and suss out the trickier Checkpoint Race sections. More than anything, it's the best time to really learn what your vehicle is capable of and measure performance over different surfaces and slopes.

One problem in the first game was that it just felt too hard. Smuggler's Run 2 improves on its predecessor, but not to the extent that it's suddenly a game for everyone and easily accessible by the common gamer. In fact, about half of the game is open to all but the most inept racing or action gamers. Nobody can complain about a challenging game, but some cheapness creeps in around about Vietnam. Enemies that you've been shaking like water off a dog all through the race suddenly gang up, grow extra horsepower and manage to arrest you on the last package. Or, enemies get so mobile they're impossible to avoid, even though none of your vehicles handle with such precision. The frustration and lack of adjustable difficulty will lead more than a few people to lay this one down in favor of a more forgiving racer.

Control is tight, but the physics have a looseness that anyone coming to Hostile Territory from playing the first SR installment will recognize. It's not quite ATV Offroad Fury loose, but pretty close. The cars don't bounce as much, but they get insane air and do seem floaty on hills and over jumps. Especially when you hit other objects, the behavior you can expect varies wildly. I always cracked up to see the pumped-up ATV pushing a big, parked cargo truck out of the way, but hitting houses, trees, rocks or other large objects brings you to a screeching halt no matter what rig you're driving. The environments are more dense and detailed, and sometimes are so liberally salted with rocks and trees that it feels like a battle to get through in one piece. Okay, it is a battle, but I'm talking about the frustration you can feel, which shouldn't be the overriding impression of the game. The environments are built well, and challenging areas full of obstacles or land-mines are interspersed with more open settings to a fair degree. Little roads are indicated in places that show an easy route through treacherous terrain, and often there's not more than a few 'good' routes to take in your deliveries. The little arrow indicator in your H.U.D. shows the way to the next pickup, but you can always grab another piece of contraband if you can see it in the window. A radar indicator proves very useful in showing not only the location of packages and pick-up or drop-off points, but also the location and orientation of enemies. The radar is incredibly helpful in staying away from enemies and watching for them trying to head you off at the pass or pull some tricky stuff. I mentioned the rear-view mirror, which works well for defensive countermeasures like the oil-slick, bombs or smoke screen. Each vehicle has a countermeasure, but there are only those mentioned plus a speed burst. Only one weapon per car is available for a certain number of uses in any mission, but they come in handy. You have to be very careful about where and how you use those bombs, since the blast from an enemy following too close can actually flip you over and leave you very vulnerable!

The fun and frantic action in Hostile Territory at least equals the first game, and there are some distinct improvements in the diversity of missions and number of modes or vehicles. Some may love the new theme, but I don't feel it added so much to the gameplay. Not that I won't be happy to see a new theme for each SR game, but somehow they need to get back to the humor that played a big part in the first installment. But, for most folks, the proof is in the pudding where the rubber meets the road...that mixed metaphor sounds like a nasty pudding, don't it? So, it's easy to recommend this one for those craving any kind of off-road racing action, a sort of 'Colin McRae meets Twisted Metal' type of experience. The combination of combat-zone racing, political intrigues and that distinctive snatch-and-run gameplay will have Smuggler's Run fans glued to the screen, and we can only wait and dream for the online version to come.