#Flatout ultimate carnage change name series#

Not that we didn't bathe today, obviously. Whereas titles like Need for Speed tend to evolve and change significantly between versions, FlatOut seems to have followed Ridge Racer's model instead the graphics, handling and gameplay have received updates, but many of the core elements of the game - including some tracks - remain broadly the same. Which, perhaps, makes our first glimpse at the game all the more disappointing - because much as FlatOut 2 was largely speaking a tweaked and updated version of the original game, this is, at heart, a tweaked and updated version of FlatOut 2.

#Flatout ultimate carnage change name series#

So, while the series isn't exactly standing shoulder to shoulder on the podium with Burnout or Need for Speed, we're still pretty hot on the idea of a next-gen implementation of Bugbear's metal-twisting, rubber-burning, gearbox-grinding smash-'em-up. That's our scoring scale at Eurogamer - you're probably familiar with it. Pat called the first instalment of the series 'a hair's breadth from being legendary', while Dan Whitehead granted the sequel a damn respectable eight points out of a possible ten. People who have played FlatOut are FlatOut fans - and that includes Eurogamer, I might add. Plucky London-based publisher Empire may not be able to match EA's spend, but anyone who's played either of the last two FlatOut games can attest to the talents of the development boys at Bugbear Interactive. The FlatOut series might not be one you're familiar with - but that's more a reflection of the power of EA's marketing for the likes of Need for Speed and Burnout than it is of FlatOut's quality. Huzzah! Buckle Up The water effects are the nicest we've seen since we had a bath yesterday.

On a more basic level, it's also shaping up to be a really bloody good game where you get to smash things up with cars. Like all good lies, it straddles two worlds it's just true enough to be believable, and simultaneously false enough to be alluring. It's an astonishing untruth, a fake reflection of a world in which going FlatOut will almost certainly earn you a speeding ticket and Ultimate Carnage is most likely to involve a combine harvester, a school bus and a foggy morning.

I remember all too well the friend who couldn't understand his driving instructor's abject horror at his flagrant abuse of the handbrake - what else is it there for, after all, if not to assist cornering? Was this man seriously trying to suggest that videogames had lied to us about how cars are driven? Preposterous!īy that standard, FlatOut Ultimate Carnage is a vast, epic, whopper of a lie. On those moments, I wonder if it's just as well that I don't drive. On the moments when I slam down the accelerator and hurtle around a corner with a scream of protesting rubber, flinging crates and boxes piled next to the road flying through the air with balletic grace, and catching the side of a rival just so with the sliding, fishtailing back of my car, so that they crunch into a building with a satisfying crunch and a tinkle of shattered glass.

I've had a couple of near-misses with driving, mostly interrupted by moving to a car-unfriendly metropolis in the nick of time, but the bottom line is: I don't drive.