I like my car fights to focus on crashes rather than weapons, and the car brawl adds a layer of excitement and strategy to the core racing experience. FlatOut, so. A bumper racing series that made waves with its crumple zones long before the era of Wreckfest or BeamNG.
Now, FlatOut, FlatOut 2, and FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage have received an update on Steam that adds Workshop support, Steam Deck verification status, improves performance, and in the case of FlatOut 2, re-enables online multiplayer.
I feel that FlatOut 2 may have the most communicative patch note of all time: “Restored unused song: ‘Papa Roach – Blood Brothers'”. What else is there to know about the game or the era it was made in? Beyond that, the sequel, and clearly the most beloved of the three, also receives the largest array of up-to-date features, including up-to-date translations, improved widescreen support, and the aforementioned multiplayer mode via OpenSpy.net.
First FlatOut the correction notes are almost as longincluding all of the above except multiplayer, plus another set of graphical tweaks and “minor fixes and improvements.”
FlatOut: The Final Slaughter Description of changes are the shortest, but don’t be fooled. The latest update only adds Workshop support, but that’s because the Collector’s Edition was released back in March already added additional languages, removed Games For Windows Live DRM, and introduced game verification on Steam Deck.
(Ultimate Carnage was originally an improved console version of FlatOut 2, with up-to-date tracks and modes, and was thus a sort of FlatOut 2.5. However, it should not be confused with FlatOut 3, which was a completely different game from a different developer and was universally hated.)
I suppose if all of these games are up-to-date to you, then you really should play Wreckfest, the spiritual successor from the original creator FlatOut. But if you played Wreckfest and want more of the same, I think FlatOut still has something to offer, as Adam explained in 2016.
