FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage Review

Crashing into cars with extreme power whilst listening to heavy metal. Sound interesting? I thought so! This is FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage, a smash ‘em crash ‘em game in which you go through race after race trying to get first place, just like every other racing game out there.

In FlatOut, similar to other big titles such as Need for Speed, you are allowed to mess around the chemical N2O, more commonly known as Nitrous Oxide or ‘NOS'. You gain the access to this chemical by smashing into cars, destroying nearby scenery or doing ludicrous jumps (not the most logical solution of course). You can then use this ‘NOS' to give your car a boost of speed!

Now you may be thinking that this is effectively any other racing game that you may have had the pleasure of playing; but that is where you are wrong. Yes, you can race around tracks aiming for first place but this is not all! With each race you complete you unlock other ‘events' such as time trials and derbies. These are the highlight of the game to me.

The Derbies consist of you and 12 other players (Human or otherwise), which you then consistently crash into the other cars until either your or their car is destroyed. What more could you want from a racing game?

The time trails are pretty self-explanatory: race around said track as fast as you possibly can to win cups and money. You can also unlock extra tracks that you can race around.

There are two modes that you can play in this game: FlatOut mode and Carnage mode. FlatOut mode is where you complete races to unlock new cars, derbies etc. Carnage mode, well, Carnage mode is something else! The most obscure activities include Human test dummy bowling to unlock more activities and win money to upgrade your car with.

The upgrades in this game are nothing special. You can't customise your car's look in anyway, even when upgrading your equipment. The only things that you alter are the stats of the car (e.g. less weight, more acceleration etc.) with parts such as brake pads and new tires, a bit disappointing as I am one who likes customisation a lot.

The online side of this game just gets more and more fun as you crash more and more cars. I just can't get enough of it. The derbies are the most fun though, just like offline but now you are playing with 12 Humans - instead of a max of 4 Humans and 8 computers. I was very impressed with this side of the game and it kept me awake until the unGodly hours of the morning smashing car after car.

So all in all, if you like to destroy things (or release some rage on an innocent bystander) whilst listening to death metal and doing insane stunts then this is definitely the game for you!