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The first Flatout found its audience by creating wacky mini-games that flung your driver out of the windshield of your car and into many obstacle-like courses. Even though the racing engine wasn’t up to snuff due to poor handling and lackluster environments, you could count on the mini games to provide lots of drunken entertainment. Two years later, we find ourselves with the apparent sequel due to decent sales figures. Whether or not the game richly deserved a follow up, I guess there are gamers who said, “Boy the first Flatout was good, but only if it had more tracks, cars, and mini games with online play, I’d pay for a sequel.” I guess those voices were heard as that is exactly what you get with Flatout 2. Visuals were the first thing to get the upgrade. Not only are the car models more detailed, but the environments are larger and with more variety including settings such as a Big City, the Rocky Mountains, and even a Corn Field. You are even treated to multiple routes to finish each course allowing various ways to decrease your lap times. What fun is racing in new locales if you don’t have new wheels to enjoy them with? As with any good sequel, you are treated to twice as many vehicles in Flatout 2 including more Muscle cars, Foreign Sports cars, Compact jalopies, and even Pick-up trucks. With the new garage feature, you can now store multiple cars so you can choose which vehicle suits each track best. Destruction Derby arenas are unlockable and are actually more fun than the racing tracks.
While the cars and tracks are new and improved, the handling still feels very stiff and heavy. Making sharp turns requires drifting and drifting early if you are to be successful and stay on the road. Even more disappointing is even though there is a good deal of car models, they all feel remotely the same. The computer A.I. is tougher this time around leading to more close races than blowouts. Toss in multiplayer action on and offline and fans of the series get exactly what they asked for. Of course, the grand daddy of all features also got an upgrade in the mini games mode. Now you have 12 all new rag-doll filled mini games including basketball, baseball, a card game, and even for those Johnny Cash fans, a ring of fire. All are unlocked from the get go and are playable online too. The only real downfall is that you have to wait your turn instead of everyone at once, leaving you bored as you wait for up to seven others to complete their turn. In the end, Flatout 2 is an improvement, but feels more like an expansion pack of extras verses a full fledged sequel. Maybe we’ll see a significant upgrade on the next gen consoles. If you were a fan of the first and are happy with the “more is great” attitude, then Flatout 2 is for you. Everyone else, this game is just a rental if just for the mini games and destruction derby arenas.
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