IGN: The races take place across a city. How is it divided?

Mann: Each of the four areas of the city are broken down into four or five sub-zones, which are split into street, drift and canyon duel races. That's a total of eight -- the number of races in each depends how important the area is, so if it's a boss challenge there could be five or six. A player has to take over half of these to challenge the boss to a canyon duel. But while a player is going after new turf they're also being targeted by rival gangs, so there's a constant balance between getting new territories and protecting existing areas.

Each of the four major areas is split into four or five sub-zones, so you're looking at over 80-plus tracks to race on. For each of the major areas there are bosses that a player will come up against, plus there are sub-bosses that must be defeated to move on.

IGN: Can we expect new race modes?

Mann: For starters we've reintroduced drift races from Underground. This time we wanted to get the mechanics as precise as we could so we spoke to experts and checked out drift events for ourselves. The car's handing is a lot more accurate now, much more pure. The scoring system is improved too: a player scores points for speed and the faster they enter a corner the more points they'll get. Secondly, a player's score depends on how much the ass of their cars slides out as they go around a corner -- the more it drifts, the more points are awarded. And finally there are modifiers and bonuses for drivers who link drifts together by sliding from one to the next.

IGN: You also mentioned canyon duels...

Mann: Canyon duels originate from street races in Japan and take place in two stages. In the first, the player must drive as closely to their rival as possible, without crashing through a barrier and wrecking their car. For the second leg it's the opposite, attempting to keep the lead while the rival racer tries to overtake. If the trailing car takes the lead, whether it's the player or the rival, they win the race.

But because these races take place on winding, twisting mountain roads there's always the danger of pushing the car too hard and crashing through a barrier. If this happens it's the end of the race and the player has to start again. We did think about writing off the cars when they went off the edge of a cliff but thought it was too harsh after someone has spent hours customizing it! It's possible to ram the other car off the road too, plus they make mistakes because the canyon duel is all about driving right on the very edge.

There's also a canyon drift mode, where the player drives down the mountain course sliding and tricking to build up their score, rather than racing mano-a-mano with a rival boss.

IGN: Finally, what can we expect in terms of multiplayer from the next-gen versions?

Mann: The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions will both have multiplayer modes. I can't go into the exact details at the moment but gamers can expect gang races, mano-a-mano and the canyon battles. Xbox Live has made it a lot easier to implement multiplayer and both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 provide the perfect environment for racing online.