FLASHOUT 2

Wipeout is a series I only recently discovered, but almost instantly fell head over heels in love with. Unfortunately, it's also a series that's been almost entirely confined to itself, with little in the way of similar games to be found on other platforms, and whose future looks incredibly bleak with the shutdown of its developer, Sony Liverpool. As such I've been clamoring to find something to fill this soon to be gap, and the unapologetic clone that is Flashout 2 seemed like a good stopgap while I waited for a more fleshed out experience. How very, very wrong I was to assume even that much. If you've (sadly) never gotten the chance to play Wipeout, it's a futuristic racing game set at an absurd speed as you careen through gravity defying courses, shooting off missiles and hitting speed boosts along the way to fend off competitors. Flashout 2 recreates this almost exactly, but what it loses is everything that makes Wipeout such an addictive, visceral game in the first place. First on the chopping block are the controls, which have the dubious honor of being among the most unnecessarily convoluted control schemes of any game I've ever played. Every pickup is tied to a different button (or direction on the analog stick), and these are explained through a horrendous button map screen and almost hilariously bad tutorial, which couldn't even be bothered to remove the "tap the screen" text from the original mobile version. Secondly, the racing itself is plagued by extreme repetition and a noticeable lack of any sense of speed. Each of the games ten tracks are almost entirely indistinguishable from each other, and are so plainly designed that I was already tired of them the first time around, let along the hundreds you'll be seeing them throughout the campaign. The different ships you can pilot all feel more or less identical, with the only difference being each is slightly faster than the last and takes more to blow up, but even when you're flying at seemingly impossible speeds it doesn't [i]feel[/i] like you are. Flying through races in Flashout 2 is unbelievable dull and tame in what it attempts, which for a game that bills itself upon light-speed futuristic racing is a huge problem. Further to this point, the handling is especially odd, with a bizarre alignment problem that feels halfway between an overly controlling assist and another person trying to steer your vehicle at the same time. It's awkward and I have no explanations for why it is how it is, or what reason the developer could have for making it this way (assuming it's not simply another of the many bugs of the game). Online multiplayer is a joke, lacking any way to invite friends, and opting to use your PC's name instead of your Steam handle. Graphically there's a lot happening on screen, but none of it is particularly impressive. Textures are blurry and simple, and the color pallet virtually unchanged from every race in the game. Particle effects lack any power behind them, seeming more like excessive lens flare than explosions. If there is anything nice I can say about the game, it would be that the soundtrack is actually not half bad, and in another context I might actually enjoy listening to it. I had high hopes for Flashout 2, despite its always questionable mobile origins, but it failed on a fundamental level to deliver even a small dose of the excitement I get whenever I play the series that "inspired" it. Even taken by itself, there's nothing fun or impressive about anything Jujubee S.A. has done, and the more I dug into it the lazier they seemed, with an abundance of bugs and mobile-port carryovers that have no business in a PC version. At this point I guess it's time to make another sacrifice at Sony's altar and hope they bring Wipeout back, because this just isn't cutting it. [b]You can read more of my writing on [url=http://kritiqal.com/2014/06/09/flashout-2-review/]Kritiqal[/url].[/b]

This is a mobile game, do not be fooled. The original controls are for tilting an iPad back and forth and it shows. The racing is very bad. There is no acceleration. The sound effects are stilted, the music is generic, the cutscenes are sub-par, the lighting is over-saturated. And it has a generic Unity Settings Launcher, which is just tacky. Is this a good replacement for Wipeout? No. Is this a good racing game? No. Does this make it a bad game overall? No, but definitely feels disingenuous to bring this to the PC platform.

Don't get this game! It reminded me alot of the old Wipeouts from PS1 and looked well presented ,and faithful to its obvious inspiration, on the store page. Alas it seems like a bad port from mobile platforms, atleast it is presented like it and plays just as bad. The gameplay is basically done for you, you can't even turn around on the damned track if you wanted to. It basically auto steer's and aims the same. I came wanting a game faithful to the old wipeouts, and the advertisements promised it, and were presented pretty well, but not at all reflected the actual gameplay. In all, plays like a bad mobile port, presented like one too (on a platform that shouldn't), is completely devoid of any challenge and gamplay that would have bought most people here, and bastardizes it's inspiration.

This game's got released too early and it's not ready yet. For a 300MB game it needs a lot of RAM, FPS drop a lot even though my PC is quite decent, achievements don't work at all (any progress you make by firing rockets,killing enemies is not tracked) Well, this game might have/ have had a potential but I think I lost 90 minutes of my life playing and trying to figure it out.

It kind of reminds me of Wipeout but somehow worse. I personally don't care much for this kind of "racing" so that may make me a little biased, but then the game doesn't exactly seem well loved. I found the controls to be aggravating and the single player racing feels kind of pointless. I don't like the way the vehicles handle at all and most of the "weapons" felt pretty flippin' useless. I did not enjoy this.

3.0/10 - Think this looks like F-Zero? Think Again. This game had me excited from the moment I checked out the videos; I was extremely disappointed though. Nothing on this game how it should. The graphics hit the mark in a futuristic way, but lack any real brilliance or high quality. You use the shop to upgrade your car but most of the add-ons are quite overpriced. This means you are prevented from playing the season until you win a ton of tournaments. You won’t want to win that many. The actual racing portion was ultimately the deal breaker. This game reminds me of an endless runner more than a racing game. You only need to go forward and you can finish the race, there aren't any challenging obstacles other than the other competitors. It's extremely easy to die so get used to the wonky key bindings early so that you can have a fighting chance to win. Worth $0.50 or so; I would suggest passing on this offering though. [code][h1] Accidently Reviewed[/h1] Was this review helpful or maybe even not helpful? Either way join this group for more. Free Keys and Reviews weekly! [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Accidently] Steam Group: AccidentlyReviewed[/url][/code]

FLASHOUT 2 is a pretty good racing game similiar to Wipeout with nice soundtrack and ok graphics but I can't recommend it because of the game breaking bugs and there are many of them. Some examples: -the first level of the Redox League have infinite lap loop bug. All you can do is hit escape and surrender on this level (you will lose points). The league is still beatable but it does increase the difficulty a bit because you don't get any points from this round while enemies does, -you can't finish the game because the last boss battle (Shadow) never loads, -almost half of the achievements are broken. some of them just don't work and rest of them are counted wrong. There is achievement for obtaining 500k money. I definitely reached over 500k but on the achievement site it does say I have just 400k. Lets go to the PROS and CONS. PROS: +good gameplay similiar to Wipeout, +pretty good graphics and does work on slower machines, +low price and frequently on sale, +awesome music (atleast for my taste), +online multiplayer, +DUKE NUKEM as one of the BOSS characters! CONS: -broken achievements (examples above), -alot of bugs (examples above), -steering is pretty weird sometimes it does randomly move your machine a little into left/right, -DUKE NUKEM was too easy... Come on guys! So the game itself isn't bad and I would vote it 7+/10 but at the current state I will rate it BROKEN/10! The last patch was there around 3 years ago so I guess it will be never fixed.

At first, Flashout 2 seemed like a rather fun little racing game to play. It almost reminded me of a less complex variation of FzeroX for the N64. It was pretty fun for a few races. Then the glitches started pouring in. The basic AI functionality seems flawed to its core. Some races are unwinnable as AIs hit the improbability drive to appear at the finish line while others appear to forget that they left their parking breaks on at the race's start line. Normally I could find some of this forgivable, however once I made my way to the proverbial final boss level... Well the level just wouldn't load. I tried reloading it several times and changing every setting I could to no avail. This kind of coding error is unforgivable. Very disappointed and a bit suprised at how poorly this game was made for the PC.

Can't believe I never put a review up for this. Anyway, its broken. Impossible to complete as the last level doesn't load. Multiple serious bugs, and poor design choices, and come levels are impossible to finish 1st. Should not even be on the store.

If you're looking for a simple but enjoyable futuristic racing game this one fits the bill. Speaking of bills, I wouldn't pay full price for it but if you see it on sale it's worth a snag if you're a fan of this genre. The game could definitely use some track variety as everything ends up kind of looking the same, and the graphics and weapons aren't anything to be too wowed by, but the soundtrack is pretty awesome electronic tunes, and the gameplay is at least fluid and fast-paced. The soundtrack and speed of the game are what redeems it from being average.