Racing games are looking up. Recently, we’ve had the likes of Burnout 3: Takedown seriously dominating our playtime, titles like Rockstar’s Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, Eidos’ Crash ‘n’ Burn and EA’s Need For Speed Underground 2 are chock-full of potential and to top it all off, a bit of a surprise has been thrown our way by Empire Interactive in the form of FlatOut. Don’t be mistaken here though, as this is no uber-slick street racer that revolves around respect for your ride rather than how you drive it. Far from it. We’re looking at a down and dirty game that is more akin to a Sunday afternoon watching banger racing in a field than a Friday night cruise with your posse.
But that most certainly doesn’t mean that FlatOut isn’t a great deal of fun. Create a profile, purchase a car, start racing. The premise is almost non-existent and following old-school traditions, all you need to know is that a good performance in one race will almost certainly unlock another. Of course, the gameplay is fleshed out a little with the ability to purchase new parts for your old wreck with your winnings, but even this is as simple as it gets, giving you the option to upgrade from default parts to used parts, regular parts and then finally onto racing parts.
And those upgrades are – quite simply ‘ essential if you’re to stand any chance of proceeding through the ‘Bronze’ races and onto the contests that follow. FlatOut’s difficulty curve is balanced really well, providing a hearty challenge from the outset that continues on to completion. Sometimes you’ll be frustrated as a CPU driver speeds past for the win as you’re stuck in a tyre wall, but you should have been more careful, shouldn’t you’
The racing action doesn’t move anywhere near as rapidly as the other games I mentioned before, although there are similarities to Burnout, such as the boost system. Damaging other cars and scenery awards you a very short nitrous boost, which should be used wisely. Use it on a corner where your car is unsettled and you’ll soon be checking out that fence in close up. A great deal of skill is also required when you haven’t got your finger on the boost button, as FlatOut’s sometimes annoying and overly slide-happy game engine will happily make you come a cropper if you lose concentration for a split-second. As will the incredibly destructible scenery.
I say ‘incredibly destructible’, simply because it is. Should you plough into a tyre wall, the tyres will roll all over the track, making navigation treacherous when you find out that your car reacts somewhat realistically when you try to drive through them as if they aren’t there on the next lap, and you inevitably end up rolling the car. This goes for all of the scenery in the game. If it looks flimsy, it will probably give way and create a hazard to be avoided on subsequent laps. However, wanton destruction is rewarded with a ‘Smash Bonus’ which tallies up every single piece of damage you’ve done during a race, and gives you cash for each and every one. What impressed me most here though, were the structures that consist of more than one piece of construction, such as bridges made of scaffolding. Take out one or two of the posts that hold up the bridge, and they fall, leaving the bridge weaker. Take out a vital support however, and the whole lot comes toppling down in your wake and with any luck, on top of your opponents. Great fun.
Despite FlatOut looking almost as good as it plays for the most part, far too much graphical clipping rears its ugly head at times and the soundtrack ‘ which consists of unsigned acts ‘ is as dull as dishwater with very few highlights. In addition, FlatOut’s main gimmick ‘ that the driver can be thrown from the car ‘ doesn’t really have any use at all (other than in the stunt events such as Darts, Highjump and Longjump.) If you crash the car at too great a speed, he pops out of his seat, through the front window and in true ragdoll physics fashion, gets over-exaggeratedly thrown about the place. Then, you press your white button and your car and driver are reset on the track. Maybe a delay where the driver has to run back to the car as a punishment for your poor driving would have been better, but it isn’t a game-killing problem by any stretch of the imagination and the bonus events such as the highjump that I mentioned earlier are painfully good fun.
And there you have it. Another racing title that is well worth your attention. Having played a very early preview version of FlatOut some months ago, I wasn’t holding my breath. Bugbear have surprised me somewhat with this, and have done a great job of pulling the game up to speed since then. Despite a couple of very minor problems with presentation, FlatOut is as highly entertaining a driving game as you’re likely to want or get right now. Highly recommended.
