'... Ultimate Destruction !'
 Developer: Bugbear Entertainment
Publisher: Empire / Atari
Category: : Racing
Multiplayer: : 1-8 (Xbox Live)
Official Site
Platform: X-Box 360
EXTRA: : /
Might look like: Flatout on steriods
Date posted: 17 August 2007
Written By: Ian
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Carnage-Tastic !
The press release for "Flatout: Ultimate Carnage" describes the game's genre as 'Arcade Destruction Racing' which describes the game perfectly.
The game is similar in many ways to the 'Burnout' franchise, yet also includes many elements present in the classic PlayStation franchise 'Destruction Derby'.
With these two games as inspiration, and some cracking gameplay to boot, "Flatout: Ultimate Carnage" proves to be a great racing experience on the 360.
Crunchin', crashin', cruisin'
Flatout UC has 2 main modes to play through, Flatout mode and Carnage mode.
"Carnage mode" gives you a variety of individual challenges to play through, from stunts to bomb races and destruction events. These are all really fun, but some of them are crushingly difficult, even just to get a bronze medal.
  
The stunts are hilarious though; all of them involving driving really fast, then ejecting your driver from the car into a variety of targets at high speed!
"Flatout mode" is a more traditional mode, in that you are presented with a variety of cups to race through with multiple races per track.
This is pretty like 'Burnout', but the career progression is better as the game rewards you for being more violent than your opponents. You can actually win far more cash for wrecking your opponents vehicles than you can for winning the championships themselves.
Points mean prizes, as you can then use the cash to buy new cars or upgrade your existing ones.
There are three different classes to race in, and the cars get progressively faster, and the races get tougher, to the point where the difficulty again becomes quite an issue!
However, the game is so much fun that you won't mind keeping playing on time and time again!
Graphics and Sound:
This game may be based on the last-gen 'Flatout 2', but don't expect some dodgy port.
"Flatout UC" includes over 8000 destructible objects per track, 25,000 polygons per car, some lovely HDR lighting, and everything about the game looks gorgeous.
It also runs at a fine frame rate with no slow-down, even with all 12 cars on screen at once.
The water effects are particularly great, with gorgeous lakes and superb spray effects bringing the environments to life.
The soundtrack is fairly mediocre, with some random licensed music, but the sound effects are great, especially the crunching sounds when you rag-doll out your car, which always makes you wince!
Multiplayer Madness
The Xbox Live portion of "Flatout UC" is both meaty and satisfying.
All of the single player modes are available, and whilst only 8 can race online, this still feels plenty. The game is pretty much lag-free, and thanks to the destructive nature of the game, multiplayer is great, especially when playing Destruction Derbies, and stunt mode gets competitive too.
  
The online achievements also help to elongate the length of the online game, which is at least as addictive as any other racing game out there.
Conclusion
"Flatout Ultimate Carnage" for the 360 nearly has everything.
It has pretty gorgeous graphics, a reasonable soundtrack, but excellent sound effects, a lengthy single-player campaign and hilarious multiplayer.
The only criticisms are the fact that the game is too similar to 'Flatout 2' but this time it's now in 'next-gen' and the fact that the game is a little too hard for most people.
If you missed out first time round for whatever reason, there really is no reason to pass up Ultimate Carnage; it is the definitive arcade racer for the 360 so far.
-Ian
Ratings
Manual:
85% |
Graphics:
89% |
Music & Sfx:
82% |
GamePlay:
91% |
|
This game scores
on our 5-point Rating System
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