Sega's Xbox racing game from a few years ago is back, and now it's online. When first released, Sega GT 2002 earned a very high score here at Gaming Age (Click Here for our review). It looked good, sounded good, offered lots of room for car collecting and improving and, most importantly, it played very well.

The game released now is almost exactly the same, but now you can race online. The online interface offers the usual Xbox Live options, like narrowing your search through Optimatch by choosing particular tracks or cars or just getting set up with a Quickmatch and whatever options come your way. The available races are listed with icons showing whether the race has already begun and how many slots of the race has been filled. Unfortunately, a lot of races in progress aren't marked as such and you'll find yourself bounced back to the search page because, for some inexplicable reason, you aren't allowed to wait in the lobby while the race finishes.

Once in the lobby, things bog down a bit. The race lobby is where the host sets up the options for the race and the players choose cars, but it doubles as the place for trading your offline goodies with other players. The ability to trade cars is a great addition, because in the course of unlocking all the bits and pieces of Sega GT everyone is bound to grow fond of certain cars and drift away from others. But it's too bad you can't trade anywhere but the same place you'll be waiting for a race. It results in a lot of waiting around while other players trade because that's what they're in the lobby to do. There should have been some way of marking a lobby on the select screen as being a place to do some trading. As it's set up now, you can bounce from one lobby to another in search of either trades or a race and you have no way of knowing what everyone in that lobby is interested in until you get there.

You can race against a field of up to 12, but the ending of the race is a bit odd. Once the winner crosses the finish line the race is over so your position at that moment is final - no more fighting for second. There are a few more original modes, too. In Team Race, the first person on your team drives the first leg, then the next person gets control for the next. There's also a co-op version, with a driver and a navigator. The driver's view is limited, so if they're hoping for any hints as to what's coming up next they'll need to listen to their co-pilot. It's a nice idea, but it doesn't work that well with strangers and being a navigator just isn't as much fun as driving.

Unfortunately, the online interface problems get you coming and going. Some modes boot you back to the game search page after a race, and some send you back to the lobby. But while you're on the track, there's no more lag in your controls than in any other online game. Instead, the cars around you jump a fair amount when they're in your view. It usually doesn't affect you, and your controls and your car's reactions seem solid as a rock, but it certainly takes the fun out of a live race when the competition fades and in out.

The offline modes of Sega GT Online are completely intact and even deeper than before, with more cars and tracks, so at $20 it's a fantastic deal if you haven't already played it. But if, instead, you're looking for the best online racing game, Sega GT Online just isn't it. The graphics, gameplay and options don't hold up to Project Gotham 2.