I like my car combat to be focused on collisions not guns, and for the vehicular argy-bargy to be an additional layer of excitement and strategy upon a racing core. FlatOut, then. A series of bumper car racing which managed to impress with its crumple zones long before the era of Wreckfest or BeamNG.
Now FlatOut, FlatOut 2 and FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage have all received an update on Steam to add Workshop support, Steam Deck verified status, improved performance, and in the case of FlatOut 2, re-enabled online multiplayer.
I feel like FlatOut 2 might have the most communicative patch note of all time: “Restored unused track: ‘Papa Roach – Blood Brothers'”. What more do you need to know about a game or the era in which it was made? Otherwise the sequel, and clearly the most beloved of the three, also gets the biggest sweep of new features, including new translations, improved support for widescreen monitors, and the forementioned multiplayer via OpenSpy.net.
The first FlatOut’s patch notes are nearly as long, including all of the above minus the multiplayer, alongside a different set of graphical tweaks and “minor fixes and improvements”.
FlatOut: Ultimate Carnage’s patch notes are the shortest, but don’t be fooled. The latest update only adds Workshop support, but that’s because the Collector’s Edition released back in March already added the extra languages, stripped out Games For Windows Live DRM, and resulted in the game being Steam Deck verified.
(Ultimate Carnage was initially an enhanced console port of FlatOut 2, with new tracks and modes, making it a kind of FlatOut 2.5. Don’t mistake it for FlatOut 3, which was a different game from a different developer and widely hated.)
I suspect, if all of these games are new to you, then really you should go play Wreckfest instead, the spiritual successor from FlatOut’s original developer. But if you’ve played Wreckfest and want more of the same, I think FlatOut still has something to offer, as Adam explained back in 2016.
