Bumped covers
The game, without any kind of narrative nunnery, catapults us straight into the dirt. From now on, we find three single-player modes: the
first is the career that drives us through the various competitions, so we can earn credits and buy new vehicles and their enhancements; the second is the Flatout, with crazy challenges to complete to earn points and progress to the next ones; the last one is for fast matches, where you just need to select the car, circuit, and settings to start ru
nning.
In the prince mode, or the first of those listed above, we will start by choosing one of two cars: the two most disastrous foursquare of
the poorest category among the three available. The competitions to be dealt with will be different: racing, arena and acrobatics. Each one offers many completely different gaming subtypes that characterize it: get first, destroy all or make more points with breathtaking stunts. Winning and earning money will still be the common goal, useful to
unlock further championships and cars. In this mode the longevity is not very wide, but it allows to discover the game and to begin to understand the mechanisms. Flatout 4, in fact, it is by no means easy to the first impact, because each circuit has some particular pitfalls that only by facing and reproaching it several times, it is possible to avoid, but not only …
Nitro for Nitro
There are two things to keep in mind: the first is that physics is predictable, but not completely arginable, and the second is that if we e
nter the bagarre, it is practically impossible to get out of it.
The logical reasoning behind the mechanics is as follows: To have a speed boost you need nitro, the nitro recovers by colliding with the destructive, with the other cars and during jumps. By doing this kind of activity you may end up on track, hit non-destructive objec
ts, or find yourself in the air as a result of collisions with physical elements of the ground that come into contact with the damaged parts of the vehicle. So you go out of the way, in the last positions and at that point you desperately go to the search for
nitro … and so until the key restart does not take over. In all this, I forgot to add that the sole goal of the opponents is to spur exactly when our door is perfectly perpendicular to the direction of their car.
Opponents are awesome guys
As far as it may have been annoying, this proved to be an artificial intelligence, net of rollback problems in the rear and some suicidal impulse of vehicles lurking at the worst of the circuit, with an easily deductible and unhealthy end. Running a curve too slowly or
making a mistake in the counters immediately become apt to bother us to get off the track or wheels in the air. Just like Mario Kart, once you hit the first crazy crowd of the road, and this manages to get the better, we just have to end up in the bottom of the group, hit by shot. If this series becomes too long the accumulated damage could also destroy the vehicle definitively, ending the race.
Frustrating, you will say. In fact, not so much because the experience gained in the field, race after race, restart after reboot, will allow us to avoid the greatest dangers, and the drivers, as we move forward, will have a better stability, control and strength. These are potable both on the front and in aesthetic and performance, with three incremental increments per piece. We would have preferred even more complete customization, but in Flatout 4 it is simply palliative to allow us to be competitive for more races without the need to immediately switch to a more performing car.
