O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Back in 2004 physics simulation of all kinds seemed like the coolest new thing in videogames. The biggest example, of course, was Half-Life 2, but near the end of the year a Finnish development studio Bugbear Entertainment released a racing game where the main gimmicks were extremely detailed physics and car deformation – FlatOut. Instead of going for extremely high speed street racing style how Burnout was doing at the time, the game went for the demolition derby aesthetic with most races taking place on dirt roads somewhere in forests in different weather conditions. It was really cool, but didn’t click with me personally due to feeling a bit more simulation heavy than I’d preferred.
Two years later, however, the studio followed the game up with a bigger badder sequel FlatOut 2 that added more types of cars and tracks a felt just the right amount of arcadey for me, so I played the crap out of it. This game then received an Xbox 360 port called FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage that enhanced and added a bunch of things and a bit later that same port was made available for PCs. With one huge catch – it was a Games For Windows Live title. No one liked GFWL even at the time, as despite a good concept Microsoft botched the execution of the service really hard and within several years the service was discontinued and isn’t even working properly on modern systems. So, for years FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage was very hard to get working correctly on PC. Until recently, when the “Collector’s Edition” patch updated the game to not just remove GFWL requirement, but to also update the title to work correctly on modern hardware. So I’ve decided to check if the game can suck me in once again, like it did years ago.
As mentioned, FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage is a racing game with heavy emphasis on physics simulation, which includes ragdolls of all drivers, who can get sent flying through the windshield if you hit the car hard enough. And Bugbear went very hard into the simulation aspect to a degree that you’d still not find often in modern racing games, that prefer static perfectionism over systemic ideas. The difference in how the race track looks in FlatOut UC between when you start the race and by the second loop can be staggering. Hundreds of physics objects all scattered everywhere, complex constructions half-collapsed, lots of things moved around and everything can and will interact with your car. You simply do not know for sure what awaits you around that next corner that swerves into a farmyard – maybe some of the sheds are now gone and some of the obstacles broken, but maybe someone crashed into a truck and moved it to sit right in the way and you need to avoid it. It never gets old and keeps on the edge throughout the race.
One big thing FlatOut 2 had was the division into 3 racing classes – derby, racing and street. Each has its own selection of cars, some special events that are unique to that class and lots of tracks that are made specifically for the class or shared between all of them. Derby cars are slower but more durable and tend to work perfectly fine even off road. Racing cars are fast, slightly less durable, can still handle dirt roads, but are more likely to spin out of control. While street racing cars are the fastest, least durable and are extremely susceptible to even minor physics object collisions and not perfectly flat roads. Across all of the classes you have a selection of competing racers, all of whom have a name, a driving style, preferred race tracks, own colour scheme and own car for each class. Original FlatOut 2 had 7 non-player racers while Ultimate Carnage raised that number to 11, so all events in UC (apart from time trials) are designed for 12 racers.
On top of the main and special racing events (like destruction derby or races on special tracks) there are time trials that can get pretty tough and “stunts”. Stunts are very bizarre and silly events, where you need to send the ragdoll of your driver flying at a certain angle to achieve a certain goal. All of them are themed after something: bowling, darts, skipping stones, etc. The idea for this mode is quite fun, but I do have to say that unlike the stunts in the original FlatOut, where they were more focused on the fun factor of how silly the ragdolls are, the events in this game (as they were in 2) have more specific rules and requirements that ultimately make these less fun and more tedious to do. And speaking of making things less fun, unlike the original FO 2, UC moved all of the stunts from the main campaign mode to a separate Carnage mode and added new types of races. And those are basically the same special event types that you have in the main mode, but with lots of rules, all of which make these events extremely frustrating. Because the rules are set to supposedly create some sort of challenge, but the completion of said “challenge” almost always depends more on pure luck than any kind of player skill.
Which occasionally happens in the main mode as well, to be fair. While I still found completing this game extremely fun, I also remembered how unless you make the “correct decision” and get the “correct cars”, races can become tedious if physics or other racers decide to screw you over, as several of the racers, due to their personality and driving style, are basically unbeatable if they get into the lead with no one around for a couple of seconds. They just won’t make any mistakes and no one else will be able to do anything to them. So unless your car is “correct” and can compete in terms of speed, you can only restart and try to make it so they don’t get the chance to take the lead. Randomness of the system also gets pretty frustrating for the Street class of cars which, if I’m completely honest, feels like the least fun class to play in. It’s finicky, can become completely uncontrollable due to the random nature of simulation and bad luck and, funny enough, their low durability doesn’t really affect anything, as at those speeds no one engages with slamming each other past the first few hundred meters of a race. The first two classes of cars feel far more interesting and usually have far more destruction and fun racing happening in them. Whereas the Street class feels like it accidentally stumbled into the wrong game. Apart from the race tracks that are usually found in it – those are very good, but Race cars can handle them too and do it better.
It’s also worth saying that while Ultimate Carnage is, in general, a better version of FlatOut 2, there are some downsides. The soundtrack is considerably worse, which is important for the genre, and only mods can unofficially add the FO 2 tracks to the game (for licensing issues, obviously). Some of the cars and their prices were rebalanced, sometimes leading to odd results. You can’t test drive cars before you buy anymore, which is very bad, as your only option now is to fumble with dozens of menus and try the cars in a different game mode before returning to the main campaign shop. Instead, you can now change the colour of the car, but for whatever reason only before you buy it and you can’t change it after you bought it… Apart from these and the very questionable Carnage mode that I’ve mentioned already, UC was genuinely better. It looks better, has proper controller support, 12 racers feels better than 8, some of the track geometry was improved. It also used to have multiplayer, but it doesn’t anymore, though FlatOut 2 officially also cannot be played online since it used GameSpy.
In general, while I don’t think Street cars were a good addition (you have to remember that street racing craze wasn’t gone in 2006) and the whole “buy cars with currency” shop seems extremely unbalanced and unfun, especially with no test drive feature, I still loved playing FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage. While there have been a couple of wonderful arcadey racing titles after (Split/Second, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2010), the only other game that went really hard into physics simulation without becoming a sim I know of is Wreckfest, the newest as of now game from Bugbear. It’s odd, given how powerful modern systems have become, how static most games still try to be. And while I do understand that sometimes “honest” systems make games less fun, in case of FlatOut 2 and Ultimate Carnage it was most certainly quite the opposite.