Like its predecessor, "Shift 2: Unleashed" tries to marry the intensity of arcade racing with the demands of simulation track racing, and like its predecessor, it superficially nails it.

The track and circuit designs are racing simulation mainstays, and "Unleashed" includes an attention to physics, weight, tuning and driving interfaces that is part and parcel with that genre. But "Forza's" fastest cars don't scream down the track as furiously as "Unleashed's" class D vehicles do in the career mode's opening circuit. Even "Burnout" -- a game known for its crashing first and racing second -- can't inspire the kind of dread you'll feel when you oversteer a corner and are resigned to feel the full might of the genre's most jarring crash sensation.

Unfortunately, it appears that "Unleashed" took to heart the flak the original "Shift" got from sim aficionados who dismissed it as being too arcade-like and easy. "Unleashed" takes a harder stab at its simulation side, but it's a blind stab, and the result is a multitude of problems far more significant than anything that ailed its predecessor.

The difference in "Unleashed's" handling is immediately apparent if you spent any significant time with "Shift," which understood the limitations of realism in a game where speed remained priority one.

"Unleashed" misses that point. Even on the easiest setting with assists on, the cars are overly prone to spinouts and vicious cycles in which you can't stop oversteering to achieve stability unless you just brake entirely. Some cars, for some reason, struggle simply to drive straight from a stop. Practice (and, more important, a delicate steering touch) makes stable driving possible, but the sim/arcade compromise that powered "Shift" struggles in "Unleashed," which punishes high-speed cornering far more than a thrill-hungry game, sim leanings or not, ever should.

But this wouldn't be so troubling if it wasn't compounded by computer-controlled drivers that apparently know something about driving these cars that you don't. Accidentally tap an A.I. car from behind, and you'll likely spin out while your opponent carries on -- which would be fine if you didn't consistently spin out when they tap you.

Trading paint with opponents overwhelmingly ends in a lopsided defeat, and one costly mistake can prove too much to overcome when your opponents are so unlikely to make a mistake (much less pay for one). Just don't expect the same courtesy when the situation's reversed: Opponents can make your quarter-lap lead disappear in seconds, even on the easiest setting.

There's nothing wrong with a challenging game, but the cliff wall that "Unleashed" throws you into is aggravating because it so clearly contradicts the game's pursuit of realism. Even if the serious crowd looked down on it, "Shift" successfully carved out a distinctive balance between two discordant racing styles. "Unleashed's" careless tinkering with that balance, meanwhile, makes it a hard sell for both camps.

Too bad, too, because everything else -- the visual presentation (including a new helmet camera view), the sense of speed, the car selection and how good the action feels during those fleeting moments where it stays out of its own way -- remains awesome.