FlatOut 2 review

Smashing things up, causing explosions, breaking things, demolishing buildings – they all provide entertainment in real life (well, to me at least…), and have all been well represented in videogames.

Of course, combining mindless destruction with something else that most of us love, racing games, is sure to be a winning formula (look at NASCAR for a real life example there). It was hardly surprising then that a game in the current-generation would bring these elements together, and that game was FlatOut. It was an enjoyable game, but ultimately felt a bit limited. Now the sequel has arrived, promising more of everything; cars, tracks, minigames and, unsurprisingly, plenty more carnage. Does it race off to the front of the pack, or crash and burn?

Burn Baby Burn

The meat of the game is the career mode. It’s simply done, with a garage for upgrading cars, a place to buy new vehicles, and cups and events divided into three classes; derby, race and street. To begin with you only have enough money to buy a derby-class car, and so can only enter into the derby cups and events. As you win races, you earn money which can be spent on upgrading your current car, or buying a new one.

Once you have enough money you can buy a different class of car and so enter into the race and street classes. Upgrading your car is very useful if you’re finding it isn’t quite cutting it anymore, but you can’t afford a new model. Areas such as brakes, engine, exhaust, transmission and body can all be altered, and an upgrade can sometimes mean the difference between achieving higher positioning in races and falling well short of the leaders.

The races themselves are a lot of fun. The handling of the cars has a solid feel to it, allowing for some nice drifts around corners while maintaining a semi-realistic feel to things. There’s a big emphasis on ramming other cars and destroying trackside objects in FlatOut 2 and you’re encouraged to plough through buildings, barge competitors off the track and generally cause as much damage as possible.

It has to be said, there’s something wickedly enjoyable about having a fellow racer swerve sideways into your path, as you then proceed to ram them at full-speed into a tree and see their car go up in flames. It can get frustrating when your rivals force you off the track, or mess up your perfect lap, but being able to dish out the same to them makes up for this and means that a race is never truly over until it’s over. Predictable isn’t a word that can be applied to FlatOut 2’s racing.

Crash = Cash

Even more of an incentive for blowing up the other racers and driving straight through signposts and such is that you get money for doing so. The more damage you dish out, the more money you can earn. It’ll also boost your nitro meter, allowing you to unleash a burst of speed to catch up with the race leaders, or make a shunt up the rear of the car in front a bit more effective.

In your career as a suicidal racing driver though, it’s not all about racing. As well as competing in cups, there are also special events and minigames to participate in. A special event might be, for example, a destruction derby.

The goal here is to cause as much damage to opponent’s cars and trying to be the last car standing. Of course, they’re all out to do the same, so this is easier said than done. It’s good fun, although loses its appeal after a while, due to their not being much to it except, erm, ramming into each other repeatedly. The minigames, of which there are twelve in all, range from high jump and curling to bowling and darts.

The twist is that you launch your driver through the windscreen of your car in order to catapult him into the air in the high jump, or send him hurtling down an alley in order to knock down pins in bowling. Whatever the event, you can be sure it involves your driver being in a whole world of pain. Again, these minigames are good fun but the appeal wears thin reasonably quickly. Multiplayer is where you’ll keep returning to these.

The game looks very good considering it’s running on the PS2 and regardless of what’s going on on-screen, there never seems to be any slowdown. The soundtrack’s in the vein of the Tony Hawk’s games, and is fairly decent. It features songs by artists such as Yellowcard, The Vines, Supergrass and Alkaline Trio, and is suitable accompaniment for when you’re tearing around tracks smashing into cars and causing plenty of damage.

Sadly, there are a couple of disappointments to FlatOut 2. As mentioned, the minigames and events are nothing to write home about. Although they feel like well-implemented features, the reality is that they provide little more than a small distraction to the racing part of the game, albeit a welcome one now and then.

While fun, they won’t really hold your interest outside of multiplayer. Also, the racing doesn’t really spark any excitement. Don’t get us wrong, it’s very solid and enjoyable, but after a while it becomes clear that it’s nothing remarkable and the fun factor can wear off. There’s little difference in the handling of the cars, regardless of whether you’re racing on a city’s tarmac or through a farmer’s field, which is a shame.

Only hardened racing nuts will see the career mode all the way to through to the end, winning all the cups and unlocking all the tracks and cars. With all of the minigames and pretty much every track and car available right from the off outside of career mode, there isn’t a great deal of incentive to play through it in its entirety.

FlatOut 2 is a solid and enjoyable racing game, with some nice quirky features, but one that falls short of greatness by lacking something really special. Worth checking out though.