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Cars handle well, much better than the demo version of the game. Car physics seems spot on and you can experience the smallest details of the car. Different cars handle differently so be careful while selecting what car to buy and be more careful while trading cars. Make a wrong choice and it can become difficult to win certain races. And remember you have to repurchase any new parts for the new car so spend your money carefully or you will be left with no money to buy future upgrade parts. There are lots of new additions to the car inventory like AUDI TT and also some SUVs to have some fun. As you start playing the game money is small and thus it takes time to upgrade your car. As the game moves on you start to fetch more money. There are plenty of races and sometimes it feels like too many races to compete. But this ensures long gamplay time. This is one of the longest games I have ever played. Unfortunately the gameplay becomes rather repetitive after some time and you can lose your interest in completing the game as again and again you have to face similar races and tracks. What keeps you going is unlocking options that add more customization options for your cars and this somehow makes up for the excessive and repetitive gameplay, to some extent. There are lots of rewards in the games. You get a chance to get your ride on the cover page of different magazines and on some DVDs. This is really cool. On some occasions you have to race against time to get onto the cover page. All these can be stored in your DVD/ cover page collection.

There is a small minimap at the bottom for your navigation. All stores and races are marked on it. But often you have to switch to the full map to navigate and this can become irritating. The city is complex and too many roads and divisions are there making it difficult to navigate only with minimap. Bringing up the full map pauses the game and its constant irritation to switch to big map for every turn you make, specially when you are just starting to play the game. They have given us a full city but poor navigation. A superimposed map similar to what we see in the game "Mafia" would have been great idea.
Graphics
The game is absolute beautiful to the eye. One must remember this game is not meant to be some kind of simulation and its supposed to be more of a fun game. Cities are colorful and brightly lighted up. Lots of billboards and neons all over the city. It may not look like a real city but its really fun. The game looks stunning. Nice reflections, nice rain drop effects and nice hill view of the city. Some scenes are really spectacular and makes you stop and look at the city from the hills. Cars are perfectly rendered with every small detail has been paid attention to. Cars look as they would in real life. I had chance to watch the Audi TT in the auto exhibition and the car looks exactly as it looks in the game. This is  a compliment to this game. Car physics are rendered accurately, you can feel the car moving over the tar on the corners and is rendered perfectly. There is a replay mode, which will let you see all these details. As with the first game NFSU2 doesnt have any damage. The licensed cars are the reason for this. There is slow motion cinematic effect and crashing sound along with broken window and glass animation but no actual damage is rendered. So you can bump your car into a corner or traffic and get away with no damage at all. This in my opinoin is a big shortfall of this game, but as told before the game is meant to be fun game so everything goes.

The game is full of advertising billboards. Looks like EA has some corporate contracts to put their signs on the billboards in the game. You will even find the Best Buy stores in the game. But again you are not there to watch the billboards and Best Buy, are you? There are light trail and motion blur effects. Personally I never liked motion blur but again its personal choice and you have the option to enable or disable it. They have reduced excessive road reflection to make it feel a little realistic but that's all. Nothing else feels radically new in the graphics department. Overall graphically the game is impressive but not something radically different from the NFSU1.