Flatout: Ultimate Carnage Review (PC)

Too much carnage, not enough flatout

Flatout Ultimate Carnage has finally been released for PC after coming out on the Xbox 360 last year, and is the third game in the flatout series. Personally, I’ve never played any of the Flatout games, so I’m looking at this release with “fresh” eyes, although a lot of people are talking about how it is very similar (if not too similar) to Flatout 2.

Flatout Ultimate Carnage is an arcade racer with the aim of the game being, well, ultimate carnage. There are a few different modes to play, but the main one is obviously the Flatout “career” mode. This starts you off by picking your first car and giving you a few different starter races to try in any of 3 different classes – Derby, Race, and Street. You will need the right class of car to race in these events, and this is where my first issue with the game arises: I just can’t see any difference between them. Whatever the class of race you enter, if you want to earn credits you have to smash your opponents to a tangled mess of metal to earn bonuses, so what is the point of the different classes? My second problem is that you always start at the back of the grid. True, this lets you smash people as you advance through the ranks, but it just doesn’t feel right, especially when in race mode there is always someone that streaks off into the lead and proves a nightmare to catch. Another gripe I have is that if you simply set out to win the races (who would have though of actually trying to win a race?!) you will get the winners purse, but you will make far fewer credits than if you try and take out opponents. Earning these credits is a very important part of career mode as they allow you to buy new cars (as I said, you need the right class of car to enter other events) as well as allowing you to visit the upgrade shop to buy new performance parts for your existing cars, although they never seem to give you a noticeable increase in performance.

The next game mode is “Carnage” aka arcade mode, which is essentially a load of mini-games. Earning points in the mini games will then unlock further mini-games.

…but the music is dire. I mean really dire…

These games range from quite good fun (destruction derby) to just stupid (bowling). I actually found myself enjoying the destruction derby as it really fitted in with the whole concept of the game, but other modes I just found somewhat juvenile as they mostly involve driving fast then launching your driver through the windscreen at a target. At first glance it seemed kind of fun, but on repeated attempts it just got boring, and in the case of the bowling it got incredibly frustrating as I watched my driver hurtle in the pins and knock a couple over, only to watch the rest of the pins lean over to about 45 degrees but never actually fall, or even worse – pins falling but not being counted. In fact I never even managed to get the bronze medal for the bowling as the score was set too high for the appalling physics. The final game mode is online mode, which allows you to play against Xbox 360 gamers using “games for windows live”.

In terms of gameplay, I was rather disappointed with FoUC. All the cars I tried felt more or less the same in handling, and while racing I never really had the feel of actually driving – to me it seemed more like I was gliding round the track. Flatout: Ultimate CarnageI should mention that I was using an Xbox 360 controller to play the game as I don’t like using a keyboard for driving games, and one of the reasons I got the “gliding” sensation was due to the distinct under-use of the rumble feature. When I’m driving round a dirt track I expect the controller to be constantly rumbling softly, but this never happened. The only time I noticed any rumbling was if I went seriously off road or in major collisions, and even then it was just a soft rumble. If you were using a keyboard then you wouldn’t get any rumble at all which would, for me, make it unbearably unrealistic. The physics can also be rather erratic at times, with bits of scenery seeming to get glued to the front of your car, or even worse, your car getting glued to pieces of scenery. I can’t count how many times I clipped a tree only to find myself stopping dead with the front corner of my car apparently stuck to the tree. Another thing I noticed is how lazy a port this game is from the console version. Not only do you need a 360 controller to get any real feel (pun not intended) for the game, but the menus still have the Xbox instructions of “Press A” to continue, “Press B” to go back and “Press Y” for leaderboards.

Graphically I don’t have as much to complain about. The game looks really nice for the most part although some of the scenery you get flying past you looks decidedly 2D, and I didn’t really notice any slowdowns (although I run quite a high spec). As for the sound, the ambient noises are pretty solid with engines roaring and metal buckling, but the music is dire. I mean really dire… It’s all nu-metal/nu-rock garbage which is seriously overused in games anyway, but which I also happen to hate. After playing a few races and making sure I’d heard every track at least once to give it a fair chance I just turned the music volume off. It is undoubtedly the worst game soundtrack I have ever heard. There wasn’t a single song I could bear listening to which is rare for me as I have a pretty broad taste in music.

In conclusion – Flatout Ultimate Carnage is a mildly amusing distraction, but not a game I could ever get into properly. I’d much rather go and play Race Driver Grid or Burnout Paradise on the 360 than play this rather lazy port of a 360 game. Too much focus is on the aggression rather than the racing, and while I understand that this is the main concept of the game, the balance needs to be struck better.

The Good: Looks nice, sounds nice, destruction derby is great fun
The Bad: Physics, soundtrack, different modes all feel the same


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2 2 / 5

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