FlatOut

The Good
FlatOut is a wonderful driving game with great visuals and incredible physics engine. It'll keep you playing for hours.

The Bad
Driver crashing through the windshield every time you hit something may be sort of frustrating; additionally, it takes a while to re-spawn after you crash; yet it won't keep you from having fun.

The Bottom Line
FlatOut is basically an action game, but you won't use any weapons; instead, you'll drive cool cars as fast as possible, crushing your opponents on the road (or getting crushed by them).

The Good
I liked the mini-games that could be unlocked after each race in the single-player game. In one of the mini-games, after you race off a ramp, you have to eject the driver and make sure he lands on a mat instead of the solid ground because...well, you guessed it. Graphics and sound are great.

The Bad
Where do I start? The whole thing shows a complete lack of play-testing. The highly hyped driving physics are absolutely horrible, though it may rather be because the developers set the gamepad sensitivity laughably high. But since you can't adjust the gamepad sensitivity in the options menu, I still don't know whether it's the fault of the controls or the physics. Even when you barely move the left thumbstick to steer your vehicle, your car is sent spinning off the track and into trees and such, regardless of if you're racing on dirt or solid ground. It's nice enough that the game lets you go back to where you previously were on the track before you crashed (the designers call it "resetting") by pressing the white button. But by the time you do that, it's already too late, as all seven of the AI-controlled racers will probably be way ahead of you.

Speaking of AI, the AI is every bit as irritating as the physics. Opponents constantly bump into you to ram you off of the track, but you don't even have a chance to do this on your opponents, as they all seem to race twice as fast as you can. Further adding to the frustration is the fact that they aren't sent spinning off the tracks like you constantly are. So maybe it is because of the gamepad sensitivity after all... Needless to say, I easily placed last out of the eight racers (which included me and the seven AI-controlled opponents). And this is from a player that constantly places first in Burnout Revenge! I spent hours practicing the game to see if I had to do something to make it "click", but to no avail. Trust me, when you play FlatOut, you will be ashamed of yourself for wasting your time trying to place first in the single-player races.

The Bottom Line
I just recently re-played Burnout Revenge, and it was an infinitely better experience than playing this mess. While the mini-games do add some sugar to FlatOut, they're simply not worth suffering through the racing sequences for.

Do me a favor and don't waste your time or money on this game, regardless of how "awesome" many of its fans say it is. Quite simply, I don't know what they're even thinking. The FlatOut that I played was a thoroughly unfair and frustrating experience. Oh well, I hope that the upcoming FlatOut 2 will be better...