PlayStation 2

FlatOut

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the game and it definitely gave me some laughs and fun times. It would be great to play again, because I can always just knock up the difficulty. The game is long in the first place, but still would have a great replay value. This is a must buy!

Mayhem. Flying debris. Bodies doing ballet in the air as gas tanks burst and glass shatters. High powered engines screaming under the stress of insane speeds. Put that all together, shake it around a little bit, and after you mix in a dollop of redneck hillbilly sense and sensibility, what you'll have in your glass, friend, is Flatout. This is where speed-crazy kids, still giddy from Burnout 3 come to play, evading barricades and jumping over each other like some sort of suicidal stunt show. Get your motor running, as they say out West.

Flatout delivers a thrilling combination of high-octane racing, smash-em-up demolition derby action and death defying stunts propelling the driver through the windshield! Wreak havoc as you race on 36 tracks in fully destructible environments. Choose among 16 different upgradeable cars that take realistic damage, affecting their appearance and drivability. Race online with up to 8 players - or in 4-player split screen mode on Xbox and up to 6 players or in 2-player split screen mode on PS2! So fasten your seat belts as Bugbear Entertainment, and Empire Interactive take us on a wild wide, here we go!

FlatOut is one of those games that has flown under the radar for a lot of people, but deserves to be noticed. Everything has come together superbly in this title with online gameplay (or lack thereof) being the major disappointment. Check this game out - you won't be disappointed.

Overall a bloody good game! If you dont own it, buy it, and if you own it, wait for a sequel because this game needs one.

One of the first games a friend and I played on the original PlayStation was Destruction Derby. We thought that this game was nothing short of awesome. We got to race, crash, and trash our cars as well as other cars on the track, having the ability to see the cars take damage and how they were directly affected by the damage was something that we haven’t seen before. Since that time there has been very few games that captured that magic of total destruction while racing. Hoping to get a slice of the pie that Burnout has currently carved out in this genre, the developers at Empire Interactive have released FlatOut upon the gaming world. Is this game worth your time? Read on to find out.

FlatOut would be a whole lot easier to recommend if certain aspects of its package were tightened up. The merely mediocre artificial intelligence, the weirdly sporadic multiplayer features across platforms, and the repetitive driver-launching mechanic are probably going to annoy the hell out of some people. But if you can look past some of these flaws, the game's delightfully unscripted core racing mechanics can be a lot of fun, especially when played against others in a multiplayer setting. As it is, it's a very good game that falls just shy of greatness, and serious demolition racing fans would do well to check it out.

I've put on my racing helmet, pulse protectors and gloves (pictures on request) while FlatOut loads. You don't exactly have to be Einstein to figure out that I had the feeling things were going to get rough! However, I had to take out the protection and gloves immediately because I couldn’t hold the controller in such a way that I could push the right, and nothing but the right, button when I wanted to. After five more minutes, the helmet was put aside too because it got so hot under it that I felt sick which was definitely not my intention.

Avec Flat Out, Bugbear est parvenu à se démarquer dans une catégorie où l'originalité est loin d'être évidente. Le jeu étonne par la gestion très poussée des déformations des véhicules, il surprend par le rôle essentiel des interactions et des collisions avec les éléments du décor, et interpelle quant à l'effet "rag doll". Au final, Flat Out constitue une bonne surprise et se révèle complémentaire aux autres titres du genre sur ce support.

The original FlatOut has garnered a sort of cult following, despite generally lackluster reviews and, quite honestly, pretty shallow gameplay. FlatOut 2 does a decent job of rectifying the latter, adding loads of cars, tracks, and a few different series to the career mode, but some of the original potholes haven't been completely smoothed over, either.

FlatOut is a pretty straightforward circuit racer where the vehicles in question are Destruction Derby style cars. This should suggest that FlatOut is a pretty hard-knock racer, and that is indeed the case. There’s even a series of arena events a la Destruction Derby. But unlike ooh, say, Burnout 3, crashing in FlatOut is pretty rubbish.

Destruction and death (of the hilarious variety) are occurrences we've always been big fans of and activities we've consistently excelled at. In videogames, the basic concepts of destruction and death have only recently been improved upon thanks to the use of advanced physics routines, or godsends, as they are more commonly called.

FlatOut desperately wants to be the trailer park version of EA's slicker racer, but without the polish, it succeeds in being only a pale imitation.

In the end, Flatout is nowhere near the level that Burnout 3 has established. I am not saying the game is bad, but is never really rises above average in any area. And if it weren't for the minigames, then there wouldn't be any redeeming value available to distinguish it from any other racers. Having drivers ejected from their cars is not enough, and if Empire and Bugbear make another racing title, they should take that into consideration. Flatout earns three out of five GiN Gems, for being an adequate if completely average racing game.

With a steep price drop, Flatout becomes a decent purchase. You'll need to suffer through some poorly done racing to get to the good stuff, but there's little question the frustrations are worth it. The first time you bowl with a human shot through a windshield screaming in agony, you'll realize how much fun rag doll physics are. If you just want crashes in this generation, just stick with Burnout.

FlatOut basically feels like a slightly more frustrating successor to the original Destruction Derby series on the PlayStation 1 (well, the first two games). It does have a lot to offer, but it all feels a bit soulless somehow. It's more of a diversion than something you'll find yourself playing constantly, working towards completion.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and if this is the case, the Burnout series should feel heavily complimented by FlatOut. The developers at Bugbear seem to have taken the basic ideas of the superb Burnout 3, moved them to a rural environment, and made it far less fun.