Flat-Out FlatOut
Six by Nine takes Bugbear's solid racer for a spin on the PSP with FlatOut: Head On, and does the series proud.
Published: March 18, 2008
It's entirely possible that before FlatOut, most gamers had never heard of Bugbear Entertainment. The Finnish developer surprised just about everyone with a physics-heavy racer that did on- and off-road racing right, but added one very important extra: ragdoll physics for the drivers. Slam into something hard enough and your guy would go screaming through the windshield with a hilarious "aaaaaarrrrgh!" that would do Charlie Brown proud.
Flash forward to just over a year later and FlatOut 2's premiere basically took everything about the first game and ratcheted it up a few more steps. It looked better, ran better and offered more stuff to crash through, plus a handful of absolutely crack-level-addictive mini-games that used the by then infamous ragdoll physics to awesome effect. That was over a year and a half ago, and while the series has made a stop on the 360 with FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage and picked up the titular Carnage Mode that adds medal goals to the normal career races, PlayStation systems have been ragdoll racing free for a while now.
While we're still keeping our fingers crossed that a full-blown next-gen version of the game will arrive at some point (and given that it's easily one of Empire Interactive's most bankable franchises, we're near-certain it'll happen at some point), but seeing FlatOut 2 arrive on the PSP more or less entirely intact (and sporting that Carnage mode from the 360 version) makes us very, very happy indeed. Sure, we'd already played through the game a while back and loved it, but it was good to see an old friend again after such a long break.
Of course, given that Head On is quite honestly the PS2 game cut and pasted with just the barest of new bits added, it's probably best to just click that link in the previous paragraph and read up on what we said there, as almost all of it applies to the PSP version as well. There are differences, however, which is what we'll talk about here.
Nearly everything that got scuffed up during the shrink job done to the game is visual. For the most part the game runs well enough, but nowhere near as smoothly or prettily as even the PS2 version, to say nothing of the 360 port. Framerate issues crop up on just about every lap -- particularly when racing in the middle of the pack or when some of the more dense destruction starts to hit. Those myriad pipes, 2x4s, fenders and the like can also cause some wonky physics bugs to crop up. I've hit other cars so hard that they actually were driven into the ground for a couple of seconds before teleporting back out to continue with the race, apparently unharmed.
It's stuff like this that exposes the game as not being a native PSP product, and while it doesn't harm the overall experience, it definitely takes the original wow factor out of the equation a little. Not only did FlatOut run really well on the PS2, it looked and controlled great too, and all three are hampered -- if only a little -- in the move to the PSP. The sound effects manage to escape mostly unharmed, fortunately, though the music is the kind of generic raargh rock that had me scrambling to turn it all off just a few minutes into playing through the Career Mode again. Besides, the engine sounds have always been a nice plus for the series, and turning off the ear-bleeding tunes just lets you listen to them more.
Really, that's as much as I can say for the game. It's FlatOut and FlatOut is a good game, has been for years now. If for some reason you've missed out or you just want access to a ton of racing content, then you're more than welcome to give this a shot. Chances are you've probably already done so a while back, though, and with a few niggling technical issues and the general familiarity of things, there's not really enough to this package to make it worth playing through all over again if you're prone to getting a little burned out. Again, great game, packed with content, but more or less a slightly pared-down version of what you could've gotten more than a year and a half ago.
Flash forward to just over a year later and FlatOut 2's premiere basically took everything about the first game and ratcheted it up a few more steps. It looked better, ran better and offered more stuff to crash through, plus a handful of absolutely crack-level-addictive mini-games that used the by then infamous ragdoll physics to awesome effect. That was over a year and a half ago, and while the series has made a stop on the 360 with FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage and picked up the titular Carnage Mode that adds medal goals to the normal career races, PlayStation systems have been ragdoll racing free for a while now.
While we're still keeping our fingers crossed that a full-blown next-gen version of the game will arrive at some point (and given that it's easily one of Empire Interactive's most bankable franchises, we're near-certain it'll happen at some point), but seeing FlatOut 2 arrive on the PSP more or less entirely intact (and sporting that Carnage mode from the 360 version) makes us very, very happy indeed. Sure, we'd already played through the game a while back and loved it, but it was good to see an old friend again after such a long break.
Of course, given that Head On is quite honestly the PS2 game cut and pasted with just the barest of new bits added, it's probably best to just click that link in the previous paragraph and read up on what we said there, as almost all of it applies to the PSP version as well. There are differences, however, which is what we'll talk about here.
Nearly everything that got scuffed up during the shrink job done to the game is visual. For the most part the game runs well enough, but nowhere near as smoothly or prettily as even the PS2 version, to say nothing of the 360 port. Framerate issues crop up on just about every lap -- particularly when racing in the middle of the pack or when some of the more dense destruction starts to hit. Those myriad pipes, 2x4s, fenders and the like can also cause some wonky physics bugs to crop up. I've hit other cars so hard that they actually were driven into the ground for a couple of seconds before teleporting back out to continue with the race, apparently unharmed.
It's stuff like this that exposes the game as not being a native PSP product, and while it doesn't harm the overall experience, it definitely takes the original wow factor out of the equation a little. Not only did FlatOut run really well on the PS2, it looked and controlled great too, and all three are hampered -- if only a little -- in the move to the PSP. The sound effects manage to escape mostly unharmed, fortunately, though the music is the kind of generic raargh rock that had me scrambling to turn it all off just a few minutes into playing through the Career Mode again. Besides, the engine sounds have always been a nice plus for the series, and turning off the ear-bleeding tunes just lets you listen to them more.
Really, that's as much as I can say for the game. It's FlatOut and FlatOut is a good game, has been for years now. If for some reason you've missed out or you just want access to a ton of racing content, then you're more than welcome to give this a shot. Chances are you've probably already done so a while back, though, and with a few niggling technical issues and the general familiarity of things, there's not really enough to this package to make it worth playing through all over again if you're prone to getting a little burned out. Again, great game, packed with content, but more or less a slightly pared-down version of what you could've gotten more than a year and a half ago.
