Review: FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage (360)

You might think that a game released at the start of gaming’s traditional summer drought, with very little hype and already appearing at a reduced price in various different in-store offers would be rubbish, particularly with the US release being scheduled some four months later than the EU debut. In the case of FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage, you would be wrong. A remake of FlatOut 2, which appeared on the PS2 and Microsoft’s original Xbox, Ultimate Carnage has been rebuilt from the ground up for the move to the next-gen, hence the new moniker. 

For those not already familiar with the series, FlatOut is a racing game developed by people who played Burnout and decided that it was too tame – the ultimate carnage subtitle certainly isn’t a misnomer with, the developer’s claim, 7,000 or more items ripe for destruction on each track. If anything, it feels like there are more. Fences, tire walls, shop windows and even petrol pumps are all there for the taking, with destruction being rewarded with nitro. But it’s not just the scenery that’s there to be ploughed through, your opponents and even your own car are all up for a “pranging” with nitro being doled in ever increasing quantities dependent on the severity of the impact. Indeed, knock another car around enough and it can be put totally out of commission. The results of this wanton destruction remains visible and can even impede progress. Take out a tyre wall, for example, and the tyres will scatter all over the track and slow down the other drivers. But destruction has to be tempered with caution. Is it worth earning an extra squirt of nitro when taking out some scenery, or another car, might slow you down or even put you on your roof? Balance, of course, is key. Spend the race driving into everything in sight and you’ll find yourself last; drive too cleanly and you risk not having enough nitro when you need it. 

Even more pleasing is that all the carnage is pulled off with graphical panache. The action takes place in what’s best described as Dukes of Hazzard country, with races taking places on rural roads and highways for the most part, taking in locations such as trailer parks, farms and lumber yards on the way and even the occasional city. A tremendous sense of speed is maintained throughout races, particularly with the nitro button held down and the framerate never so much as stutters. There are no licensed cars here (although you may notice that several “pay homage” to some real world automobiles), but the vehicle models are excellent and fall apart spectacularly. The racing environments are richly detailed, with the water effects in particular being excellent, although you won’t have much time to admire everything as you tear round the track. However, the same praise can’t be lavished on the grating American angst-rock soundtrack that rumbles away in the background.

As a package, FlatOut is quite generous. There’s the obligatory career mode, featuring three different classes of cars, with each class offering numerous cups to play through as well as an array of upgradeable cars to buy. Success in cups also opens up optional class specific events such as destruction derbies and time-trials. In addition, there’s the rather splendid carnage mode. This is essentially a series of mini-games involving a range of activities from destruction derbies through to trying to reach checkpoints as quickly as possible to stop the bomb in your car from exploding. By far the most fun part of carnage mode is the stunt section. Here, you are required to build up speed, before launching the driver of your car through the windscreen to complete a stunt, be it the high jump, flying through flaming rings or skimming him like a stone. FlatOut’s impressive rag-doll physics really shine here and the joy of executing a perfect stunt is unparalleled. There’s also something quite funny and perhaps a little bit wrong, about the crunch with which the driver hits the deck. Of course, there’s a Live mode, which offers exactly the same level of destruction as the offline game as well as the option to customise races. Knowing that the car you’ve just wrecked belongs to one of your friends makes victory even sweeter. Online play runs incredibly smoothly given how busy things can get on-screen and the fast and frenetic gameplay is the perfect antidote to those bored by the comparably sterile racing offered in Forza 2.

Given the forging, you might think that aside from being a great game in its own right, FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage is good enough to topple Burnout from its position as king of the crash and bash racer. Sadly it’s not, as FlatOut suffers from two big faults. Firstly, the difficulty is unforgiving and unbalanced. You might scrape through the first cup you play, as you’d probably expect, but after that, the difficulty ramps up considerably. Tuning your car seems to have little or no effect, and it’s not uncommon for one of the AI controlled cars to build an unassailable lead, while you’re being crashed into by the pack. Furthermore, make one mistake, or more likely get hit by another car, and you’ll all too often end up at the tail-end of the race and have to drive as if your life depends on it to make up any ground. It’s difficult to square this difficulty with FlatOut’s knockabout arcade style handling. Secondly, an annoying feature of FlatOut’s over-the-top physics is that ramming a car often causes it to turn around and get stuck, crossways, against the front bumper of your car. This has a hugely detrimental effect on speed and whilst annoying at the start of the race, it becomes hugely frustrating if it happens on the last lap. It’s precisely this sort of controller-smashing frustration that Gamestyle thought testers were supposed to pick up on.

So, FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage is a game that pushes the franchise to the threshold of greatness, the title’s quality belying its low-key launch. However, it’s difficult to recommend FlatOut wholeheartedly given that the practically non-existent difficulty curve and frustrating physics might be enough to deter those in search of simple arcade crash ‘em up thrills entirely.

Rating: 7 / 10

Words by Andy Lucas