FlatOut is Empire Interactive’s adrenaline fueled racer where simply racing will not be enough to gain overall success. You will need to use every dirty trick basically outlawed in any form of Motor Sport to ultimately succeed.

Not trying to recreate in anyway a Sim like racer, FlatOut delivers a more classic Destruction Derby type experience. Simply put FlatOut is a buckle up your harness, edge of your seat pedal to the metal racer without all the bells and whistles of a more serious racer.

Gameplay:

Once the game starts you will need to select a car from the dealership, don’t worry you are able to purchase further cars throughout the game and each car is customizable in the form of both appearance and tunable with parts such as the chassis, clutch’s, suspension, tires, exhausts & Pistons. Customization of your car is a big and necessary part of the game, in order to maintain your performance edge over rivals you will need to monitor and upgrade vehicles throughout your progression through the game.

The game features a variety of challenges, some come in the form of run of the mill races, destruction derbys and mini challenges which are great and include, Long Jump, Darts, Bowling and Stunt challenges amongst other things. Mini challenges also prove to be not only great but also a valuable skill to master in order to earn points which are consequently used to upgrade you car.

In any of the racing modes pretty much anything goes; each of the tracks featured are littered with sneaky little ways for you to gain a valuable yet unfair edge over you opponents, these can come in various shapes and sizes although jumps and short cuts appear to be the most favorable. You will need both your racing skills and every dirty trick in the book in order to slow your opponents, after all as they say “rubbings racing” and “point’s make prizes” or in this case valuable upgrades. As an added bonus each collision will also earn you a valuable nitro boost which will often become necessary for that little extra blast of speed in order to be the first to pass the checkered flag.

The vehicle handling is tailored to suit the arcade style of the game perfectly, drifting the rear of the vehicle is a real pleasure; it’s easily achieved yet requires practice to ultimately perfect. Crash hard enough and your driver will be ejected from the vehicle, you almost feel the pain for the poor driver as he rag doll’s down the track until coming to a halt. It’s a crazy and maybe unnecessary addition in the race modes yet is used to great effect within the mini games.

Graphics:

Graphically FlatOut is no Project Gotham Racing (PGR) but it was never intended to be a near perfect recreation of real world locations as seen in titles such as PGR. This is an arcade smash, bash and crash racer with a twist and the graphics creates near perfectly the variety of environments and locals which are required for the at times, complete mayhem featured within FlatOut racing.

Personally I found the graphics more appealing to the eye than those seen in so called bigger titles, unlike these bigger or better known titles the developers BugBear have at least put in some effort to use the potential of the Xbox’s graphical superiority over the rival consoles and this doesn’t appear to be a just another simple PS2 port which is all too often the case with other companies.

Naturally considering the nature of this game all of the vehicles come complete with a bare bone skeleton with the addition of 40 deformable pieces, panels, windows, lights etc which all smash bend and break making for some pretty decent damage effects, although these don’t appear to effect a vehicles overall handling or speed. All of the environments are destructible as well, with barrels, fences etc all able to be smashed through (and often revealing a sneaky short cut) as well as leaving a trail of carnage behind you which can be used to slow any pursuing racers.

Sound:

The ambient sounds of the vehicles engines, crash’s, smash’s, and bash’s, are all present and delivered accordingly. The sound track featured is of a rock nature which fits nicely and is not overwhelming, personally after a short time I was turning down the in game music volume setting because with the limited tracks available and no custom sound track options they soon became repetitive, although I must also admit I’m not either a rock music fan or even a fan of music in racing games in general so this is an option I always look for in racing titles.

Longevity:

FlatOut has the potential to last the duration of the race, featuring a whole host of multiplayer options including Xbox LIVE, 4 players split screen and system link this is a great blast and in all of the multiplayer modes it really is great fun and entertainment for you and your friends. The single player game may prove to be rather short for those more advanced racers with the early levels proving little more than a warm up for the real action that lies ahead as you progress, although the less advanced racers will probably find an adequate challenge under the bonnet of this great fun racer.

Overall:

Featuring 36 tracks in one of 16 fully upgradeable cars FlatOut offers a great fun racer combined with the car tuning although this is not as extensive as say Forza Motorsport, the mini games and all of the Multiplayer features makes this a real blast and if your after a fun racer with plenty of options I would recommend you take a look, although for die hard racer fans this may all prove a little limited.