Racing wheel owners will also be disappointed to find that FlatOut 4 doesn’t offer any wheel support on console. There’s a satisfying sense of weight to the cars that makes catching slides and knowing when to use the handbrake is a skill which takes time to master, but the handling isn’t responsive enough to handle the excessive speed gained from nitro boosts. Using the nitro in cautious short bursts helps, but it’s a conflicting design decision that causes unnecessary frustration. Unless you have super-human reaction times, the narrow routes, tight corners and deviously placed hazards make it difficult to avoid overshooting and slamming into walls and obstacles. While the sense of speed is exhilarating when activating nitrous, the tracks haven’t been designed for the insane speeds you can reach. Many locations from previous FlatOut games return, including the fan favourite Water Canal circuit from FlatOut 2 which has you racing through drainages, and the slippery snow track from the original FlatOut with ice patches which can spin you out, as well as lumberyards, factories, a new dusty desert environment and a nerve-racking figure-of-eight circuit designed for close calls and crossroad crashes. The 20 tracks are well designed with a smattering of shortcuts and alternative routes to take advantage of to add variety, as well as dozens of destructible objects to smash into which has always been a staple of the series – it wouldn’t be a FlatOut game without barns to barge into and cones, tyres and fences filling the air during races. In a genre saturated with serious simulations, FlatOut 4 arrives at a time when there’s a strong demand for arcade racers that don’t take themselves too seriously, just as car combat games are starting to make a belated comeback with the recent releases of Carmageddon Max Damage and Gas Guzzlers Extreme, and of course the forthcoming release of Wreckfest when it eventually escapes Early Access. This aggressive approach to racing can take some adjusting to, but it’s a welcome throwback to destruction racers that flooded the market in previous console generations. Being constantly spun out by rivals tapping you from behind can get frustrating, but that’s the nature of demolition derby-style racing games. Races in FlatOut 4 are fast and furious, thanks to ruthless AI opponents that won’t hesitate to barge into you at every opportunity. It’s a simple mechanic, but it works well, adding a risk versus reward element that made the original FlatOut games so intense. Rather than rewarding you for clean overtakes, smashing into scenery and ramming into opponents will fill your nitrous boost. Like the previous FlatOut games, causing carnage is just as important as finishing first in races. FlatOut 4 is billed as a love letter to the forgotten franchise, and Kylotonn has done a commendable job taking the series back to its roots, capturing the spirit of the original games and pretending that FlatOut 3 never happened.īoot up FlatOut 4, and there’s a strong sense of deja vu, from the menu design and driver profiles for you to hold grudges against (where are the Benton brothers from the original games?), to the blaring rock, punk and ska soundtrack featuring lesser known artists, though Scottish rockers Twin Atlantic seem to dominate the track listing. The good news is that FlatOut 4 redeems the franchise and is a vast improvement over the last abomination – though that isn’t exactly a difficult achievement. ![]() ![]() So, when it was announced that WRC 6 developer Kylotonn and Tiny Rebel Games were developing FlatOut 4 Total Insanity, expectations weren’t very high in the wake of the wreckage left by FlatOut 3. The abominable FlatOut 3: Chaos and Destruction followed in 2011, a PC-only game so wretchedly woeful it nearly wrote off the series for good – not only is it the worst entry in the FlatOut franchise, it’s widely regarded as one of the worst racing games ever released. Original developer Bugbear Entertainment went on to develop Ridge Racer: Unbounded and new IP Wreckfest, leaving Team6 Game Studios to handle the FlatOut franchise. While the original games in the destruction racing series fell under a lot of people’s radars, fans regarded them as alternatives to the popular Burnout series and a spiritual successor to the classic Destruction Derby series. FlatOut has a notoriously chequered history.
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