When driving simulators and street racers pace the genre, Flatout is a quick, dirty, and thoroughly satisfying play.
Shortly after popping in the Flatout disk, the game makes it very clear what it's about. The intro is a slew of car's bumping, flipping, and smashing themselves to smithereens, all to a slow, off-beat rock ballad. The main menu's background shows one of the game's cars in ruins: missing wheels, it's internal parts surrounding it on the ground. Flatout takes ugly, beat-up derby cars that definitely feel like they're on their last legs and lets you chew them up even more, sending them skidding through dirt and sand into fully-destructible environments. Smashing your car up is not a negative, it's a necessity. If you finish a race with any glass left intact in your car, you probably lost. The only way to make this racing formula work was to make crashes minimally problematic, and Flatout pulls this off very well. Smacking into a stack of tires or some oil barrels does slow you down or knock your car a bit off-kilter, but it also rewards you with nitro, which is fortunately used only moderately, as these cars were not meant to go over 100mph. Seventy miles per hour in this game feels like a lot more, because you never know when a lip in the equally gritty tracks will throw your car sideways. Even smashing into trees or propane tanks at full throttle doesn't doom you to last place; after your driver is ejected with a yelp through through the windshield and rolls for a couple seconds, the reset button puts you right back on the track, ready to race.
I bought this game with no manual and started my first race with no clue what the controls were. In keeping with the game's style, the default controls are simple and natural, and took only a race or two to flesh out in their entirety. While it's hardly the savviest way to play, I found things were often as easy as using the accelerator and steering, as the cars will drift through just about any turn no matter what you do.
While it may sound like a complete arcade racer, the physics and handling of Flatout are very sharp. The bigger, more powerful cars feel much different than the smaller vehicles, and command you to drive accordingly. And while the game encourages you to beat your car to death, avoiding obstacles and driving responsibly is still ultimately the best way to win. That said, you'll finish many a race with your engine bare and your doors swinging open and closed at every turn. The overall sound in the game is a treat. The sound of the engines is throaty and clunky, just like they should be. Damage to both your car and the environment varies in volume, and doesn't depend solely on the force of the impact to determine that. The soundtrack is very southern rock, which is really the only kind that would be appropriate, because the environments, cars, and racing style in general evoke images of the south. The audio portion of the game blends seamlessly with everything else.
All in all, Flatout is a game that I think everyone should give a chance, and every racing fan should have in their library. Anyone who's played racing games before will be able to pick up a controller and get into the multiplayer action in a heartbeat, and the crash-and-thrash pace of the game is relentlessly fun, with friends or on your own. Definitely worth checking out.