Genre:

Vehicular Combat, arena/adventure style

Estimated Release Date: 2004ish

Graphics/Art Style: As realistic as early PS2 graphics could be was the style. The visuals were dark, the textures muddy, and I remember there were many night time maps with low light so your cars tail lights and headlamps were often on. Of course the vehicle models themselves weren't the smoothest.

Notable Characters:

There were no actual human drivers that I can remember, but I have a vivid memory of a dude-bro style truck that came with a lightning power up. That or any car could pick up the lightning rod from the map and use it.

Notable Gameplay Mechanics:

I played this split-screen and you and your friend start in a decent sized map. One was themed like a city center with buildings and roads, one a snowy map with hills and pine trees, and then a desert one. You chose whatever vehicle you wanted, the standouts being a yellow school bus and a truck.

The objective is To drive around the map picking up power ups like a machine gun or lightning rod or missiles.

When you hit the other player, their vehicle showed damage before smoking and then exploding.

I expressly recall the lightning rod power up was accompanied by an announcer voice saying "lightning!" each time it was used, and basically no matter where someone was on the map, they were gonna get zapped.

Other details:

This game was released for the Xbox live arcade at one point I believe around 2007 or 2008. I also don't recall any actual race mode.

(EDIT) The view is 3rd person.