Reviews
It’s fair to say the arcade crash racing genre on Xbox 360 really only has one supreme champion in Burnout Revenge. While other arcade racers such as Ridge Racer and the Need For Speed series have aimed for a more straightforward approach to drift racing nothing else has tried to take Burnout’s crash crown, until now. With a title like FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage you’d wonder whether the developer BugBear is either acting cocky and over-confident or purely just trying to capture the market with direct imitation of that classic series. What’s most surprising however is, for all its unoriginal design and flat out plagiarism, the game actually delivers on its title in spades and even more amazingly outdoes Burnout Revenge in many areas to stand as an accomplished racer of its own devising.
They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and upon loading up FlatOut:UC the most immediate impression you get is that Bugbear has copied the Burnout template to the letter for the front-end of this game. From the menus to the informative loading screens and the dire rock music soundtrack everything looks like an almost carbon copy of what players have already seen in Burnout Revenge. That said, the interface in Burnout Revenge was slick and well implemented so it’s hardly a complaint… It is only until you get into the game proper that the differences become apparent.
Here, in FlatOut:UC the main modes of play are the FlatOut and Carnage modes. In FlatOut mode players must start in the lowest of three classes that include Derby, Street and Race classes. Whilst the Derby class comprises of slow, heavy stock car vehicles they can also take considerable damage so they are a perfect place to practice the art of racing and staying alive, something which is necessary to perfect before you hit the higher class vehicles that are faster and more vulnerable to damage. The FlatOut mode comprises of several championships that you must pass to progress. Within each, players must enter events such as races, destruction derby’s and time trials… though it’s the racing that takes up the bulk of the offering.
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