FlatOut 2

Great videogame. Still really fun.

First of all, BEFORE you buy a car you can use the up and down arrow keys to change its color. FlatOut 2 is a racing game that encourages aggressive driving! You literally earn nitro and credits for ramming into opponents and smashing through scenery! I’d never really clicked with traditional racers, but I actually had fun playing FlatOut 2. On top of your regular races, there are fun challenges, mostly consisting of mock sport events where you use your driver as the ball! It’s hilarious, challenging, and I love it! You can replay all events and races as much as you want and still earn credits every time. The races themselves are solid, but winning them can be brutally difficult, especially later in the game. Each driver has a ‘personality’ (their own driving style) that is creatively explained on loading screens, and two of them in particular - Jack Benton and Sofia Martinez - are relentless; beating them often takes a double-digit number of attempts. And it doesn’t even feel skill-based, it’s more of a matter of waiting to get the right luck. But while you do, you’ll be tearing through the cars of your opponents and destroying anything and everything that isn’t a building or a metal fence along the way. There are a couple of minor bugs: 1) on rare occasions the debris physics go haywire 2) certain fences can flip your car on its side, quickly slowing it down, which makes them unreliable for cushioning those steep turns. But those inconveniences are insignificant in the grand scheme of things. With all that creative flavor text about the drivers, there could’ve been some story, but I guess it’s fine either way. FlatOut 2 may not be the most polished racer, but one that I actually enjoyed.

Nitro you get for crashing stuff and other cars, mass of random objects cluttering tracks, durability on cars makes for chaotic and amazing experience. You can be 8th on your 3/4 loop and finish up first anyway, because all the other cars will crash into each other and make for a pile of burning goo. My recent favourite was pushing another car that was lying on its side for like a kilometer using nitro that I was constantly getting for having him on me. I didn't see the track, I was just sweepinig everything before me with another car. I love this game.

Classic arcade racer. Always had so much fun playing this back on the PS2. Only downside is the controller support dosent work correctly. Still a good buy.

Even after many years I'm coming back to this title. This game is about crashing cars, ragdoll physics (for cars especially) and clear fun. I have tried other racing games but not even close to such fun factor. Most of them have too much simulation mechanics (Wreckfest) or distilled arcade (NFS series and Forza Horizon series). If you are looking for something similar, then Split/Second is worth a mention.