![]() This game exceeds it's audience and bounds in greatness- and is the worse off for it. A game ahead of it's time, styled after a genre long-dead, running too well on merely moderate systems. The game's lightning-fast engine works against it in this way, as the all-too important gameplay tips are featured on the loading screens, which are subverted in an instant. In keeping with the difficulty level of the arcade games this game styles itself after, however, the game isolates new players, who will quickly become frustrated with the overintelligent AI. It's like a new-age arcade racer gone wild. Gameplay is great and innovative, multiplayer is incredibly comprehensive and intuitive for all it's flexibility and the bonus modes make great use of the game's oh-so-smooth graphics engine in a flamboyantly hilarious and arcade-like manner. Sturdy and bug-free, runs amazingly well, loads fast and looks beautiful on a computer with an 8-year-old motherboard. Your driver just sits like a lemon, an expressionless bod, occasionally twitching when you hit a pillar.Īside from the career-type racing, FlatOut Mode, you also get Carnage Mode which contains a whole load of extra events to take part in, including some ridiculous stunts, as well as Live Mode for racing online, Single Events (which may allow you access to some things you may not have unlocked), and a Party Mode where a number of players can compete in stunts and so on for a bit of a laugh.A very excellent game. You also get a dubious replay mode, which is perhaps of limited appeal, as you’ll see your car racing from various uninspiring angles and it doesn’t seem to do any favours graphically. If you must reach the top rung as fast as possible, you can sell you car to raise more cash. The biggest prizes come with winning cups, so it is worth investing in your car to ease your progress as you go along. The levels do become a little familiar as you race, sometimes it will seem like you are doing the same laps over and over, especially if you don’t qualify, so there is some potential to become repetitive. One nice element is being able to see the locked levels and cars, so you know you have something to play for. The game gets progressively more difficult as you unlock cars, tracks and earn money to progress. It is perhaps no surprise that the default "Player" is the spitting image of Paul Walker (Brian O’Conner in The Fast and the Furious) and there is a heavy dose of that street racing feel in the top category. There are a number of default players in the offline mode and the game tries to give them some personality by flashing you a brief bio of them. ![]() You can stick to racing for the cash rewards, but getting stuck into some grudge battles is all part of the game. Nitro yourself into a competitor and you’ll get a massive nitro boost in return, which is good economics in my book. Nitro plays a big part in the games and fortunately smashing into things gains you nitro, and no more so than slamming in to your opponents. Most of the environment is destructible and there are plenty of plastic chairs and tyres walls around, just waiting for you to slam into them. Swipe a log pile and on the next lap, they’ll be there to launch you off the road. In Ultimate Carnage, of course, the real aim is to smash stuff up and the game boasts 8000 different perpetual objects, i.e., you hit them, they break, but they don’t disappear, oh no, they fly, bounce, roll, and meet you on your next lap. You’ll hear a glorious ensemble of roaring engines, tyres squealing, crashing cars and screams through-out the game. The bass is fairly heavy, so put your subwoofer into it, or a decent set of headphones, and you get the most from the roar of the car’s engines.Īside from the serious business of racing, there are plenty of laughs to be had through-out the game: nitro your car into a tree and the driver will be catapulted through the windscreen with a scream. The soundtrack is really good too and you can change the level of music and "fx", so you can beef up the volume of the cars. On our test laptop (Acer Aspire 8920G), it looked glorious, with no sign of frame rate problems, even when the action really got furious in multi-car pile-ups. The key difference is support for a wide range of resolutions and aspect ratios for different PCs, and you’ll need a higher-end setup to really get the most from it. ![]() FlatOut UC delivers fantastic demolition racing at breakneck speed and right from the start it feels like a console game, which isn’t a bad thing.
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