Need for Speed: Underground 2 is a 2004 racing video game developed by EA Black Box and published by Electronic Arts.

Need for Speed: Underground 2 provides several new features, such as broader customization, new methods of selecting races, set in a city known as Bayview.

The story takes place after the initial events of Underground, shortly after the player beats Eddie and his street racing gang The Eastsiders in Olympic City, along with Melissa.

Revered as the best street racer in Olympic City, the player wins a race while driving a blue Nissan Skyline GT-R and promptly receives a call from an unidentified individual with an "invitation" to join his team, followed by a threat explicitly disclaiming that he is not "taking no for an answer".

Angered, the player immediately hangs up the call and drives to a celebratory party; while talking to Samantha on the phone, they are blinded and ambushed by a Hummer H2 from a dark alley, which rams and wrecks their Skyline.

Six months later, the player boards a plane to the fictional city of Bayview with a good luck note from Samantha, referring to her friend Rachel Teller, as well as being given a car key bearing the name 'Rachel'.

Desperate to stop the player, who has accrued too much reputation and hype, Caleb eventually pits all remaining Wraiths members in a URL tournament against them, which fails.

The player defeats Caleb, now left penniless, and celebrates with Rachel and Nikki, solidifying their status as the best Underground racer in Bayview.

Underground 2 is the first game in the series to feature an open world called Bayview, which itself is based on the U.S. cities of San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

It is the second game in the Need for Speed series after Underground to offer a Korean-made car (Hyundai Tiburon) as a racing vehicle.

Vinyls and decals can also be added, as well as car stereos (speakers, amplifiers & subwoofers), hydraulics, nitrous bottles, and underglow neon.

Underground 2 also introduces a dyno-tuning system which allows players to specifically tune certain aspect of the car such as ECU, turbo, suspension springs, front and rear shock absorbers, gear ratios, aerodynamics, brake bias, individual tire grip, etc.

The player can test the settings via a dyno run which will display a torque and power versus rpm graph, and an estimated 0–60 mph (0–100 km/h) time.

Underground 2 had online multiplayer capability on PS2, PC, and Xbox, but by 2010, EA Games had shut down their servers, rendering the feature inoperable.

There is a mix of different genres ranging from rap, trance, electronica, and rock, performed by artists such as Chingy, Paul Van Dyk, Unwritten Law, Spiderbait (doing a cover of Ram Jam's Black Betty), Fluke, and Queens of the Stone Age.

[67] There was also some criticizm for the game hip-hop slang used by the characters (such as using "bank" to refer to money), the comic book styled cutscenes, and the lack of police, which were last seen in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2.

"[69] Detroit Free Press gave the Rivals version all four stars, exclaiming, "The racing here is just flat-out fun, with growling engines, jumps, and shortcuts that allow you to smash through fences.

"[70] On the other hand, the same newspaper gave the GameCube, PS2, PC, and Xbox versions a score of four stars out of five and said, "While the driving action isn't quite as satisfying as the superb Burnout 3, it's still strong enough to keep you playing through the 150 or so races.