However, when an annoying and altogether too regular quirk of the physics system forcibly sticks a rival car to the front of your bonnet, thus essentially halving your speed and removing any chance you had of winning a race, that's rather a lot more annoying. It looks odd, but it's not a major problem. So, for example, when a physics bug makes a piece of destructible scenery spin around uncontrollably on the track for no reason - that hardly matters, since most objects on the track don't affect the handling of your vehicle anyway. The stunt minigames take place in a massive arena - and use one of the coolest cars in the game.
However, in a significant number of cases, the physics is just broken - and in some of those cases, it's broken enough to ruin an entire race. Most of the time, the physics is fine overstated, certainly, with many items seemingly weighing almost nothing, and cinematic, over the top destruction being favoured over realism, but that's exactly what we want to see in this sort of game. The problem is this Ultimate Carnage has some seriously, shockingly dodgy physics in places. There is, however, an additional problem to add into this mix - and here, we hit the big whopping caveat to which we referred at the start of the review. There's a place in the world for hard games, as long as they're hard in a way that challenges you to overcome them FlatOut certainly belongs in that category. While it's unquestionably harsh, and sometimes utterly disproportionate in its punishments for player errors, the fact is that the game is enjoyable and challenging enough that you will press reset, rather than stabbing the Xbox 360 power button. On its own, however, we wouldn't really hold this aspect of the game up as a major problem. In fact, it feels a bit like a kick in the teeth. We can assure you that by the time you see that Achievement pop up on screen, you won't be laughing. To add insult to injury, the game even unlocks a 5 Gamerpoint Achievement ("Perseverance") when you reset a race for the umpteenth time - suggesting that the developers find the fact that much of their game relies on gritting your teeth and resetting funny. When you're on the third lap of a lengthy, difficult circuit, this is mind-bendingly frustrating, and normally requires that you simply reset the race and try again. In other games, these barriers would be strangely immovable, as if fixed in place by God himself. Slightly misjudging a turn, however, or getting tapped on the tail of your vehicle by a rival at a key moment, can send you into a spin that won't give you a chance to reset on the track until the entire pack has sailed past you, leaving you in twelfth place.
FLATOUT ULTIMATE CARNAGE DRIVER
Actually smashing headlong into a solid object, sending your driver flying (hilariously) out of the windscreen in the process, will allow you to reset on the track instantly. What's worse is that the punishment is generally not proportional to the mistake you made. The net effect is that while staging a final-lap catch up is often outright impossible, it's perfectly easy to make a single mistake while in the top three, and get knocked back to 10th or 11th place as punishment. However, it's also due to some rather unfair AI behaviour, which allows cars in front of you to get a long way ahead, while keeping cars behind you closely bunched up with your rear bumper. This is partially due to the handling, and the need to work out for yourself what balance to strike between racing and combat (money is awarded partially for doing well in races, but also for slamming your opponents and generally being aggressive - the two goals are frequently hard to reconcile). Despite being presented as a fun game that doesn't take anything too seriously, there's a punishing difficulty curve at work. The question of difficulty edges us a little closer to this review's major caveat. The game is still tough, and small mistakes can be punished incredibly severely, but the controls are largely speaking consistent and solid. However, we quickly adapted to the control system - it's all about learning how much pressure to put on the acceleration trigger, with the brakes only coming into play on incredibly tight corners. The handling of the cars feels slightly loose to begin with, and you'll certainly find yourself sliding out of control regularly in the first few races.
FLATOUT ULTIMATE CARNAGE SERIES
In terms of actual racing quality, Ultimate Carnage is arguably the finest game in the series so far.
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