Messing about with layouts is mildly distracting - and yes, when subsequently racing your creation, it is obvious that it is the result of a jump-obsessed madman, rather than the playable but bland circuits secreted from a professional's mind. As such, the editor is perhaps the most entertaining slice of the package. It's just unfortunate that upon completion, you are obliged to actually race the thing.

The central pursuit of Rally Cross 2, namely the booting of your wheeled rectangle laboriously around slippy trackage, is where the title really gets mud in its eyes. While lacking the austere control demands of the big name racers, Rally Cross 2 somehow manages to be as thumb-wrenchingly tricky as all of them. But in a bad way.

Mobiles dawdle about the place adagio-stylee. Achingly delayed control (a feeble attempt at pseudo-realism) renders pin-point control a thoroughly abstract concept. As a consequence, attempting to thread your bovine block though a gap to attain any position other than fourth (ie, last) more often than not results in physical usurpment. Again. And yet again.

While more honed PlayStation race em' ups inspire an innate desire to improve, somehow Rally Cross 2 merely inspires a hasty depression of the off switch.

Visually too, the title is little more than unkempt mawkishness. The vehicles appear to have gone through a lathe backwards and as a consequence bare a similar finish to the produce of a second year woodwork class. Bitty, unshaven and altogether not the sort of thing that should feature in a contemporary videogame.

Ladle onto this deeply pedestrian course detail, less-than-smooth race action and an inherent difficulty curve that will alienate all but the most determined and you have a game suitable for only ardent video race loons or the criminally dull.

In common with all third rate produce, Rally Cross 2 needs little serious consideration. Indeed even those with a penchant for supermarket own brand beverages may find it leaves an unpalatable taste in the mouth.