Flatout has to have some of the most unresponsive cars ever made but the crashing is tons of fun
Flatout takes this trend with style. Although not quite up to the mark of Burnout 3 which was revolutionary with it's crashes, Flatout does have some really great crashes and explosions when your cars impact. The cars are quite ugly looking unlike Burnout 3 and all pretty much look the same, but again the crashes are so entertaining that you forget all about it. The cars can be destroyed and stripped to a great degree making your car after while of getting wrecked pretty hard to control, like it isn't difficult enough.
Speaking of controls. The cars control so terribly that I couldn't believe they didn't fix this. Every time you make a slight turn you dont' really turn, your car just keeps sliding into a tree or off the track. Good luck trying to make a 180 degree turn. This is incredibly frustrating and makes the core racing pretty irritating. You also can't crash into a lot of the clutter such as tires and signs because it makes your car randomly spin and crash. When you crash into cones, sometimes your car will literally spin and crash just like crashing into tires and signs. This makes absoultely no sense.
Flatout audio is also a hit and miss. The music is as generic as it gets with European rock, but the car sounds are great. Some sound a little underpowered, but the big cars all rumble like they should. Overall though, the music just fades into the background, I mean some of the tunes are a little catchy but it's just not that great. Plus you can't really listen to the music because your to busy trying to get your cars straitened out and on the road.
Your opponents are also very aggressive and will stop at nothing to slam you off the road. This is actually quite entertaining because I really enjoy the cars crashing and grinding against eachother. On the negative side, if you have a light car you can easily get knocked off the course.
Flatout is pretty simple and is an arcade racing game to the core along with desturction derby on the side. You only have: gas, break, and nitro when racing. You get this nitro by hitting into things. Funny enough, hitting into the clutter that is all around the tracks is quite dangerous and not really worth it. Plus, your cars don't turn or do anything that well unless going about 10 mps, so it's not recommended to really use it.
Flatout isn't that hard overall though, your opponent cars aren't that prone to rubberbanding and they fall and crash like crazy. Speaking of crashing, it looks beutiful but at the same time, something repetive and frustrating happens. Your driver gets launched out of the front windshield each and every time you make a crash above about 30 mps. Wow, I never thought I'd say that.
Lucky for this game, your cars aren't always difficult to control, after a while, you can save up enough money to get upgrades. These upgrades can be used to make your car go faster, make your car turn better, and so on. These all cost more and more as you upgrade and you start off with some slow cars, but as you progress you can essentially get faster and easy to handle cars. You can also go back to any track you did and redu it to get extra cash.
The graphics are superb. This is one of the highest points of Flatout and apart from the physics, is the reason why Flatouts cars look so great. The tracks and worlds are all very well detailed.
The career mode is pretty short, ranging in about 9 to 10 hours, plus you only need to get in 3rd place to continue on. Of course, getting in 2nd or 1st would get you more money, you can usually get by enough with 3rd place and then redu any race that is pretty easy. Thers a total of 36 races, but most the tracks are just opposite tracks of the ones you already did, making the tracks themselves pretty boring.
Flatout also has some mini games that are entertaining for a little while. You have to launch your driver out of the front seat of the car to hit like a dart board or go into a full auto destruction derby type mode. These aren't really all that great and don't last long because you can just break your records pretty easily and the cash isn't all that much. You can also go into these destruction derby crash modes where you just crash every other car and try to survive. This is my personal favorite becuse you get to see the cars get destroyed to a great degree and not have to worry about that next turn. However, the unresponsive controls still makes it difficult to pin point hitting your opponent car perfectly. Another fun mini game is this figure 8 where you have to go around the 8 of course, but theres a big gap where cars all hit eachother and I guarantee that you will get hit and crashed into in this mode.
Overall Flatout is a perfect rental. Some will love it, some will hate it, but many will agree it as a great rental. Not something you will be playing for a terribly long time. But for longtime Burnout fans wanting something like it to play, Flatout is perfect to hold you through till Burnout Revenge gets here.