FlatOut

Instead of fun it is annoying. should have made it fun instead.

Thing is I really wanted to like this game, and there are some elements that would worth a thumbs up, including a great soundtrack and some fun ideas. Yet it fails as a racing game due to the strange collision physics and the catch-up mechanics that completely randomizes the results. No matter if you win or lose, it has nothing to do with your driving skills, but with the randomness of the AI catch-up mechanism. Compared with games lke Destruction Derby and Carmageddon, the fun factor is lower, while the frustration factor due to randomness is much higher.

It’s a fun game but so far Flatout 2 has been better 6/10

[h1] TLDR: Solid game for the start of this series. [/h1] I'm not new to this series and have played here and there some entries, which I really liked. So when I made it to this game, I knew what the Flatout series could put on the table. But I was generally surprised with what foundation this game laid for the series: a good soundtrack, generally favorable driving physics, ragdoll physics for human models, damage models, track variety, etc. So let's talk about strong points of this game. Good soundtrack - there is strong lineup of songs from not very popular artists. They are not for "just filling the sound void", but rather bangers that even now pull on its shoulders all sound design of the game (with the game's outdated car engine sounds, a random, momentary hiss sound that I heard in the game (I was playing the latest updated version of the game on Steam)). So even now the game sound department feels decent with all its shortcomings, including only one song replaying throughout the race (which can be fixed with mods - thanks to big update in 2025). Driving physics - its solid, feels pretty arcady, but has some shortcomings with its randomness while accelerating while cornering (and it's not uncontrolled wheelspin, but rather the car's rear end just tends to slide to random sides, not even to the side of the corner, and it can't be helped with gas control, i've tried on keyboard and controller). Still, it's reliable, for 90% of the time you know how the car gonna react to your inputs. Ragdoll - not that it's necessarily an important thing in-game, its dosent interfere with gameplay, rather, it complements it and its damage model. It doesn't play that much of a role in the race, but when you crash your car and the driver flies out of the windshield, you can see the impact of the crash with the combination of the damage model and ragdoll. And it kinda fun to mess around with in some game modes. Speaking of damage models - even with very outdated graphics, damage models are still one of the top-notch for racing games. It's detailed, takes into account not only from which direction your car got hit, but generally shows damage at the point of impact, and that is the game's calling card. Tracks variety > Good developed game modes - And for the last point of the strong side is tracks variety. They differ from each other drastically, and every race there is a new layout for the same map, so they feel different, and each track and layout elevation amplifies this feeling. But where track variety exceeds, game mods feel lacking and underdeveloped. Those "fun" game mods are just unnecessarily hard and tedious for how they ar low skill/high luck. Let's look at darts and those type of game modes: Not only you get spawned not facing your "challenge", but you have no space to straighten yourself for the jump, and not being able to control yourself while flying just adds onto problems (we can see how they made it not easier, but more fun to play at the next game entry, FlatOut 2, and onwards). And I want to point out another thing while we're at it, at the derby, cars not only feel too fragile, but they takes absurd amount of damage from objects on the map like cones, tires, etc; and from just driving and jumping on uneven surfaces. And for weak points I want to point out only one separate point, not counting all other things I mentioned already. So graphics feels outdated not only by today's standarts, but it was little bit dated already by 2004. On side by side comparison, FlatOut 1 looks laking at some lighting effects and style at all compared to game from 2004. It looks bland, like there is no bright and vibrand colors from sun, etc. Even fidelity of textures looks just slightly lower to other games. Not that it totaly awful, but i can describe it just in two words: Something lacking. But even with all those shortcomings, this game still pretty much shaped single player/multiplayer FUN arcade racing games for years. So, with a clear conscience i can rate this game as 3.5 out of 5. It's really fun game for the first time playing and I would recommend anyone who love racing game to try it, maybe complete it for first time, but thats all.Game just does not have much replayability compared to its successors.

це як жувати шифєр, але нравиться

Игра юношества! Лучший способ избавиться от повышенного кортизола :) Спасибо разработчикам за создание этого шедевра. П.С. за музыку отдельное спасибо!

Cool race game, with metal music

я повесился на шнурках из-за очивки за трюки...