Just picture it; you’re travelling at over one hundred kilometres per hour in a rocket car. Then you quickly jump out of your car in an attempt to glide through a series of flammable rings of death, and to top it all off, you land in swimming pool. As ridiculous as this all sounds, it’s actually pretty fun – and stunts like this make up a large part of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage.
Just picture it; you’re travelling at over one hundred kilometres per hour in a rocket car. Then you quickly jump out of your car in an attempt to glide through a series of flammable rings of death, and to top it all off, you land in swimming pool. As ridiculous as this all sounds, it’s actually pretty fun – and stunts like this make up a large part of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage.
In FlatOut you start off as relatively broke car enthusiast who enjoys racing in some pretty wild contests. There are numerous characters throughout the game like Sofia Martinez – she likes to race clean and keep it real, or Jason Walker who’s a real wild guy, he’s aggressive and unpredictable.
These character profiles are a nice touch however they’re put to waste because the game lacks any true dialogue between the racers as you swerve into each other.
When you do fall out of your car you’ll see yourself as a rag doll model which appears completely lifeless, these artistic quirks are seen throughout the game, for example the tyres aren’t round they’re more like polygons, and rather than making the production quality look cheap – it instead gives the game some character.
Finally this game also has an excellent soundtrack loaded with a whole bunch of independent rock acts which we’ve never heard of. You’ll probably find yourself discovering some new bands along the way which is a bonus.
This game does have a few problems, the car models are pretty ugly, the sound effects are drab, and they could have come up with some better names for the fictional vehicles – I mean the “Daytana” cmon guys think harder!
While this isn’t the quintessential racing title for the 360, it is the only one to offer a wild mixbag of humour and adrenaline pumping racing.
Developer: Bugbear Entertainment
Publisher: Empire Interactive
Classification: M15+
Formats: Xbox 360 and PC
URL: FlatOut – Ultimate Carnage
Reviewed by Michael Stark
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The most positive elements of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage are the variety of race modes and the chaotic nature of the game. The two primary playing options are: Flatout or Carnage Mode. In addition to this you can play on Xbox Live, Party Mode, and if you want to try out events that you haven’t earned yet – you can just jump into Single Events mode.<br />
In the end it doesn’t matter what mode you select, you’re going to find yourself crashing into just about everything and the game is beautifully chaotic, you can barely see where you’re going and that’s the way it should be.</p>
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The difference between the two primary play modes is huge.<br />
Flatout Mode is similar to Forza 2 where you upgrade your car and earn your way up to the big league, or you jump into carnage mode where you compete in Deathmatch Derbies, and perform Stunts.</p>
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The racing itself is very challenging due to the cars being very difficult to control while the games’ artificial intelligence is set pretty steep. Like all racing games it just takes some getting used to. Luckily you don’t need to come in first place to get rewarded; this is because there are numerous awards to win in the racing events. For example, you could just drive into the most scenery and score yourself the Bulldozer award. </p>
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What makes this a strong game is the Carnage Mode, more specifically the Stunts. There are plenty of them and they are simply ridiculous, but this is a good thing. You can jump out of your car at high speeds to compete in High Jump, Basketball, or even Ten Pin Bowling where you are a human bowling ball.</p>
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