I guess playing this and along with the first one what kept me going was finding out how the mechanics worked in certain levels like launching nukes, or making giant killer ants appear in meteors. Launching the cars into orbit by shooting them up against the level boundaries I always got a kick out of.
This is such a slept on masterpiece, over shadowed by Twisted Metal. dont get me wrong I'm a fan of both, but Vigilante 8 outdoes twisted metal by far when it comes to physics (wheels turn, progressive damage modeling, suspension, guns get mounted to the vehicle so missiles don't just come out of the front of your car) I could possibly have 1000s of hours in this game but theres no way I could know for sure. So there are storylines and objectives in each map that are different depending on who and what faction you play as. And then theres the upgrading system that slowly changes your car until it gets maxed out and changes to a new version of the car all together, that keeps you playing even after you have unlocked all the characters and beaten all the storylines.