So, I just finished the game. It was fun, even though it was quite a short ride.

While it is a good game by itself, I have to agree it's a poor sequel to I76.

The story is lame, characters were decharacterized (Groove specially) and I could get by with an awful car I got early in the game, filled wih 2 light machine guns, 1 heavy machine gun and a fire rite missile shooter and loads of armor.

Three machine guns simply mow down most enemies.

The levels themselves were fun, better than some of the most anoying ones in the previous game. The on foot parts were nothing special or interesting, but didn't annoy the heck out of me either.

Also, sound tracks and CGs from I76 are just plain better.

In the end, it's a shame the series died with this one. I'd love to see it rebooted into modernity.

It sort-of still lives on with the Vigilante 8 series of games that shot-off from I'76 in the late 1990's. The newest release was Vigilante 8: Arcade on the Xbox 360 Live Marketplace. It's not a driving simulator, but I found it to be a fun vehicular-combat game.

I've heard about Vigilante 8, but it's kind of a fail to not have the latest on the PC.