When In Doubt, FlatOut

A great contender for the burnout series, Flatout 2 is one of the most engaging and destructive racing games to come out in the 2000s, selling over 500K copies within 3 months of release. Compared to the prequel, bugbear entertainment completely Revamped this games' physics and visuals in which I think is a huge positive.

Choosing from 3 car classes, most of the cars have their own unique physics to suit a players driving style, mixing drive terrains (RWD, FWD) with different stats to mix things up a bit. While the game did have over 45+ cars to choose from, one thing I found negative is that some cars are just re-skinned versions in different classes. It's nothing too negative but it felt as if there weren't as many cars as you'd think.



The environment exceeds its' own personality and it works great. There's varying elevations on tracks to keep a player in the air and on his feet. There's thousands of props you can smash through to get yourself a ton of nitro and smash through other opponents. While they were great and all, main problem about this game was its' lack of tracks/content. When you get to the race class, you'll start to find the tracks get a little repetitive because there wasn't that many tracks to choose from.



Now, unlike burnout or asphalt where you hold onto the enemy AI to wreck him, Flatout let's you do things more freely. You could either choose to race normally, or be the menace the race track needs. Both ways are optimal to play depending on the car you choose but the game rewards you for being reckless, awarding you a fat stack of money for destroying everything that comes your way. Not to mention the graphical effects and the damage models alone makes it all the more satisfying to wreck enemy players.



Weirdly enough, there's are a bunch of recurring characters that race against you. Yes I'll admit, some drivers have some crazy rubberbanding but not to an unplayable extent. You also don't go against each of these drivers one on one like how NFS would've done. It's nice to have a laugh at their misfortune and get mad at my own.



All this for 5 bucks is quite the steal and when it goes on sale you can buy it for 1 dollar. I highly recommend this game for newbies and diehard racers.