Time of destruction

FlatOut 4 is the latest arrival of the so-called genre of “tamarri and destructive racing games”, a genre definitively canonized in 1995 by Destruction Derby which has evolved very little over time.

 

FlatOut represented an interesting tribute released 9 years later followed by a couple of chapters with ups and downs , but the juice of the game is more or less the same: racing on absurd tracks, unconventional industrial setting,

 

machines with excessive design, imaginative mini-games, a permissive driving pattern and great care in showing car damage. All of course accompanied by a soundtrack that offers punk-rock-ska songs almost completely indistinguishable from each other. Will this fourth chapter succeed in doing better?

FlatOut 4 continues the tradition of destructive racing games … but crashes before the finish line

PLAYSTATION TROPHIES 4

FlatOut 4 has some pretty simple trophies to get, just win in the various tracks, complete the various championships and buy a certain number of cars. However, there are decidedly tricky trophies related to minigames that could seriously take your sleep away. Getting them all will be a much more difficult challenge than you think.

A FEW STEPS FORWARD

Considering that the third chapter can boast a shining 23 on Metacritic and an honest 4 in our review , it was easy enough to do better and we must recognize this

 

Total Insanity of being successful in the enterprise. However, between good and good there is a big difference and the nodes come to the comb already after the first laps. Just to be on the safe side Kylotonn decided not to go too far out of the sown and propose a title that fits within that tradition that we have described just before.

 

The game basically offers two main roads: a career in which to buy cars more powerful to change to compete against increasingly aggressive opponents, and then a FlatOut mode in which to look for the maximum score in a series of challenges quite crazy.

Time of destruction

If you want it is also possible to compete on the net or make a fast race. Just to see how it all worked we immediately got behind the wheel in a fairly simple race.

 

The game offers three different classes of cars that are faster and more difficult to drive, so to start off, we have chosen a copy of the VolksWagen Beetle and the first track set in a wood and a sawmill. After a few laps it is evident that the driving model has some problems.

 

The cars must obviously be light, so you can do absurd acrobatics, the problem is that this sometimes causes sudden spinning, overturning or changes of direction because we have had contact with a tiny debris.We happened to take off simply passing over the tracks of a railway. Sometimes, however, the car simply decides to steer abruptly to the right or left due to an irregular terrain.

 

Add all this to the doorstep and, in some cases, to Mario Kart-style bombs and you will understand how to come out alive from a race is often a matter of pure luck.

 

There are times when you can not do anything but see your car bouncing in the air because you are constantly being bombarded by enemies. In fact, as far as artificial intelligence is concerned, we have ups and downs.

 

Sometimes it’s bad, relentless and unattainable, other times we ended the race by boring ourselves the last lap because we no longer had anyone behind. We even happened to have a game at Capture the Flag and find out that,