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Smile UK Store - FlatOut Ultimate Carnage (PC DVD)
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List Price: £19.99
Our Price: £14.98
Availability: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served.
Manufacturer: Empire
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Empire
EAN: 5017783027921
Label: Empire
Manufacturer: Empire
Platform: Windows XP
Publisher: Empire
Release Date: 2008-08-01
Studio: Empire
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Editorial Reviews:
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Hi Octane motorized anarchy – Maximum fun, maximum chaos, and all in eyeball searing high definition, FlatOut Ultimate Carnage is PC’s most extreme destruction racer. With three distinct carnage-filled game styles, an integrated championship racing career mode and intense in-your-face destructive action, FlatOut Ultimate Carnage is the gaming world's most smash-tastic driving game to date! FlatOut Ultimate Carnage Features: Arcade destruction racing at its best: FlatOut's peerless real world physics engine combines vehicles built from 40 plus deformable parts with over 8000 destructible objects per track. Huge number of race styles to suit your mood and preferences: Career racing. Compete in progressively tougher championship wrecking your way through 3 classes to become the ultimate FlatOut champion. Arcade racing. Deathmatch Destruction Derbies, time trials and crash filled challenges. Highly competitive FlatOut racing action: Compete against 11 other drivers in single player modes from a choice of 48 cars on 39 tracks in 6 different environments. Wreck you way across parched deserts, massive storm drains and narrow city streets. Fully supports Games For Windows live: Up to 8 player simultaneous Live play including Races, Derbies and Stunts, plus the all-new Deathmatch Derbies and the excusive Head-On race mode. Hilarious Ragdoll characters catapulted in-race and in 12 crunching mini games: The Ragdoll is a unique to FlatOut - which is catapulted through your windscreen or, even better, the other driver's windscreen as they are wrecked out of the race. Additionally there are the 12 Ragdoll events which take some beating for their sheer body abuse (e.g. High Jump, Stone Skipping, Ring of Fire, Field Goal and Free Kick). Cars look stunning: See every scratch and dent all with real-time environment mapping to create a grittier realistic appearance. flatout features dynamic shadow maps for every 3D object on the track including buildings, scenery and cars making all movement in Ultimate Carnage exceptionally smooth. Improved particle effects e.g. Dust, dirt, smoke, water splashes and bouncing sparks.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: more of the same
Comment: Basically this game is just a prettier version or Flat Out2 There are no new tracks or new stunts but the graphics have been improved. The game play itself in multiplayer mode is actually slightly easier and far less demanding than Flat Out2. In the origional FO2 multiplayer game, cars like the Bullet GT were really tricky to control, in this version they have been severely tamed making them far less prone to spinning even with full upgrades. Personally I feel this reduces learning curve and skill of the game, not to mention the enjoyment, but some may think otherwise. The difficulty now seems to reside far more with cones and other debris that falls/ are placed, on the tracks rather than with your mastery of the vehicles handling characteristics. It seems to me that the most likely reason for carnage, ultimate or otherwise, is from hitting some random piece of wreckage that punts you off into the scenery than from actually losing control due to driver error. This was always a problem in FO2 but to me it seems to have got alot worse in this version.
Sorting out a windows live account is REALLY annoying as it asks you to create a profile name before you can register the name on windows live. This means that if your chosen profile name has been taken (something you cannot know until you register with WL and judging from my experience it will be taken) you have to change your profile name to match your WL profile name before playing online. Once you have managed to sort out your WL profile it is possible to invite friends to join games you've set up which certainly is an improvement on FO2, the ingame text chat/voice facility is a bonus also. Overall it's not a bad game by any means especially when you consider the sub £15 price tag. If you don't have FO2 and you want a fun racing game to enjoy with mates over a few beers this may well keep you occupied for a good few hours this offering wouldn't be a bad choice at all. On the other hand, if you are looking for any real progress over FO2, this isn't it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Cheap and very cheerful !
Comment: After the GPS sent the Need For Speed series down a cul-de-sac to be ambushed by the politically correct, there have been few casual racers on the PC. GRID is very pretty, but has a steep learning curve and not suited to a quick 5 minutes while inebriated.
Flatout Ultimate Carnage fills the gap for me; capturing some of the fun of Need for Speed Most Wanted, with demolition derby, time trials, racing, etc. Handling and control is clearly from the NFS school of arcade racing, keyboard being fine for automotive carnage, no complaints about responsiveness.
As the title suggests, the game can be played as a straight racer, but that would be missing out on the main attraction of the game; to cause as much destruction as possible, awards being given for destroying other cars as well as winning the race. The physics engine is hard at work, with in your face graphics effects of damage, car panels just there to be thrown about the screen, lots of roadside objects and deformable structures to collapse. There's little damage modelling, as this is an arcade racer, foremost, and therefore no impediment to the destruction that you can cause. Similarly car tuning has roughly the same effect as the NFS series, rival racers matching the ability of your car, and 'elastic band' difficulty settings ensuring you don't get too far ahead or behind the pack. Realism, who needs it when you're enjoying yourself.
Cars are unfortunately not real licensed models, no BMWs, nor white vans or caravans to total, but it's fairly clear what marques the developers were aiming at. Graphics are crisp and detailed, running smooth and at high resolution on an ATI 4870 with no stutter, as to be expected; but without the softness of GRID nor clinical precision of GT3, not that it makes much difference after 5 minutes of causing mayhem and chaos.
Amusement isn't just from the 'racing' however, for the first time in a while I've been interested in watching replays, just to watch the antics properly. Just playing the game 'straight' would be missing out on the main selling point of the title.
All in all, recommended, until Burnout appears on the PC, and for this price.
Customer Rating:
Summary: This is FlatOut 2 with better graphics
Comment: Basically, this game is FlatOut 2 with better graphics - the cars are mostly the same, the tracks are totally identical, the gameplay is very close to its predecessor and, yes, they've changed the music but its still cheesy guitar rock that I set to 10% level (who likes background music when playing car games - I don't!).
You will need a pretty good graphics card to play this at the highest settings - my ATI 2600XT struggled at only 1024x768 (most of the time it was OK, but sometimes it would drop frames like crazy). Oh, the menu navigation is a lazy port of the console version - (A) to accept, (B) to go back - couldn't they bother writing "Enter" and "Escape"...it's "only" been 9 months since the console release after all.
Having said all that, if you've been under a rock and never played FlatOut 1 or 2 and have a good gaming rig, then this is probably the best destruction derby-style game out there. Sadly, anyone who likes that genre will be disappointed at the developers' gall to release a sequel with 100% identical tracks - if I was a Bugbear employee, I'd be cringeing with embarrassment at that...
Customer Rating:
Summary: Flatout ultimate carnage Vs Flatout 2
Comment: As a huge fan of Flatout 2 I thought I'd let you all know what the main differences are between Flatout Ultimate Carnage and Flatout 2 . Firstly let me say that there are quite a few differences and I found that although this game isn't exactly the eagerly anticipated Flatout 3, it's definitely worth buying. The graphics are the most noticeable difference, everything is now in lovely HD and it's quite an improvement over Flatout 2. There're more smoke effects, more sparks and all those crashes look even better than before with more track-side objects to destroy.
The races against the computer now include 12 cars instead of 8 as there're 4 new characters that have joined the Flatout racing scene (the online mode still only supports 8 players though). The tracks are all the same as before and there're no new ones which is a little disappointing but having 12 cars instead of 8 makes up for that as the races are more frantic then ever and it's great fun ramming the new hoody-wearing character off the road.
All the music is new and there're lots of tracks to chose from various groups. New menu systems give it a fresh look and there's a fun new game called beat the bomb which involves beating time targets to avoid your car exploding. It's great fun and is a nice addition to the modes we had before in Flatout 2, all of which are still in the game. There're several new cars to choose from and all these little changes make the game feel fresh and worth playing through again.
If you're a Flatout fan then I'd say this is definitely worth buying, especially as it's only around £15. The big drawback is you'll need a very modern and powerful PC to run it at all. Your graphics card must be at least a 256mb Geforce 7600 or an ATI x1800 or it just won't run. You'll need a minimum of a dual core processor with 2Gb of ram (4Gb is really needed to run it at it's best).
It's worth noting that this game won't run on laptops at all at the time I write this. It says that on the back of the box and it's not compatible with any current laptop graphics card that i know of, well maybe if you spend over £1000 on a laptop it may work but certainly not any normal one.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good but not flatout 3
Comment: I have to say im very disappointed in this game i know its pretty cheap already and you can get it for £10 in some places even though its been out only a week but if you own flatout 2 already unless you want better graphics i really would avoid this game. There are no new levels from what i can tell its basically flatout 2 with revamped graphics which im very disappointed about as i was expecting more i already own flatout 1 and 2 so its really a waste of cash purely to buy a game just for newer fancy graphics. However if you havent got or tried flatout 2 before then for a tenner this is a great game to start with i will say one other thing on full graphics on flatout 2 i was around 60-80fps on the new one im right down to 30fps so it does hog your system alot more with the new graphics it has!
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