Iain hopes his insurance is fully paid up...

Like many other people, right from the moment that I played my first racing game I wanted more. I wanted to drive harder and faster than could ever be humanly possible. I wanted to drive through streets filled with traffic, endangering the lives of countless pedestrians and Sunday afternoon drivers. I wanted to drive right through the middle of a barn, and then wrap my car around a tree propelling myself through the windscreen in a hail of shattered glass and broken dreams.

OK, possibly a little melodramatic but that sums up quite nicely why FlatOut 2 is just that little bit different. It’s not the fastest, nor is it the most in depth driving experience you’ll ever have but that’s not the point. The point is that you’re driving a heap of rusted metal that had seen better days when FDR was in the Oval Office, at speeds that something which is essentially a death-mobile held together with little more than spit and good intentions should never reach and you’re cackling like a raving loon. I don’t think I’ve been as anti-social in a racing game since Destruction Derby 2, all those years ago.

Sure, Burnout 3 did takedowns and to my mind it is still the best racing game available but there was one important factor missing. Namely the screams of your opponents as you give them a practical demonstration of their crumple zones.

It’s not just death and destruction though; the actual racing that forms the basis of most of the pileups is solid enough to stand up on its own. While the car physics are a bit too far towards the floaty side of the suspension spectrum, the tracks are well designed and a lot of fun to crash round and there’s a decent number of “tuning” options (I use the word “tuning” loosely, as in this case it means upgrading to an engine that works without driving all of your teeth back into the gums and wheels that are predominantly round) to be bought with your winnings.

Accompanying the various racing options, there’s several stunt modes that range from the relatively sane (attempting to fling the driver as high as possible in a high jump event) to the quite frankly bizarre (aiming to hit giant playing cards in an attempt to make a winning hand in a giant game of poker). While these mini-games were never meant to engage in the same way as the main races, rather provide a brief moment of comic relief, they do that in such glorious abandon that you’ll keep coming back to these long after you’ve grown tired of the vanilla racing.

The Mother

To top it all off, you also have what is in my mind, the mother of all modes in a racing game. Destruction Derby. Eight cars, one arena, seven smoking wrecks at the end. To try and attribute the appeal of it to anything more than a primal quest for dominance, an instinctive love for machines and an even greater love for blowing them up would be making it too complex. This little game mode is all about the catharsis, and is the perfect cure to any frustration caused by some of the glitches that occasionally rear their ugly heads in the career mode.

I’ve already mentioned the slightly floaty car physics, which means that the handling of some of the wrecks can take a bit of getting used to. In addition to this, there’s the slightly random nature of the environment physics. As few as two years ago, I wouldn’t necessarily expect something to fall over if its legs had been taken out from under it. But in a game that makes such a point of the destructible nature of the environments I’d expect a water butt or a fuel tank to fall to the ground shortly after I’ve just smashed through all four of its legs. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case here and a floating tank is a disappointingly common sight.

That aside, it may not be big or clever but it is certainly one hell of a ride and leaves many a racer in the dust.

GAME's Verdict

• The real antidote to Gran Turimo's stuffiness.
• Plenty of ways to create carnage.
• Graphically impressive.

• The occasional physics glitch.
• Floaty handling for many cars.
• Some utter dross on the soundtrack.

Review by: Iain Thomas
Version Tested: Xbox
Review Published: 03.08.06