Trawl the internet and pretty quickly you find some rather nasty references to the FlatOut series, the one springing quickest to mind that I've heard is ‘Burnout's hillbilly cousin' and for a game from a European developer where nobody of such a persuasion lives, it's confusing at best, and misleading at worst. To dismiss this great series of games as second rate so impetuously is insulting to its fans and a great development team so let me try and set the record straight here. If you're stuck in the world of Burnout and want to see what Burnout Revenge should have been like, then you owe it to yourself to check out FlatOut Ultimate Carnage.

While I can't speak for the whole XBW team, I loved the first game and 2.5 years ago I awarded it %85. Ragdoll physics in a racing game, that would rock so why hadn't it done before? Well BugBear Entertainment from Finland obviously asked the same question, found nobody to talk them out of it and created the FlatOut series. Someone other than Red-necks and Hillbillies must have enjoyed it as it spawned a sequel and now an updated version of FlatOut 2 is finally hitting the platform it should have originally launched on.

Actually, comparing FlatOut to Burnout probably isn't that fair. I don't want to retract my comment though as there does exist a number of people out there that will probably just not ‘get' this game but the two are quite different in a number of ways and therefore offer a different experience. Burnout is all about smashing your way through city traffic, winding highways and generally having your car pinballed around the track like you're on some insane water slide where other traffic is the water and the sides of the roads being the edge of the slide. This offers a big adrenalin rush, but at the same time the game is guiding you, almost holding your hand to the finishing line.

FlatOut on the other hand is a demolition derby race through farms, canals, and yes, even cities, but also contains a fair number of specialist figure eight tracks and traditional demolition derby events on oval tracks, a shopping centre carpark and even a skyscraper. Your hand isn't being held here but rather it feels like both of the games hands are in your back, pushing, edging and tormenting you to drive faster and then giving you a solid two handed pat when you wreak damage, destroy opponents' cars and create as much carnage as possible. Sure, both games are about racing, and while I'll never dismiss Burnout as in any way technically inferior, FlatOut offers up a much more visceral and raw experience that is extremely enjoyable and plenty of fun.

The FlatOut (career) mode is broken down into 3 classes of car, Derby, Race and Street, each once containing a wide selection of cars that increase in quality and speed as you progress. As events are beaten money is awarded that lets you purchase new cars and upgrade existing ones with a fairly lightweight catalogue of parts. Things are kept simple, there's no advanced Forza style telemetry going on here, but the enhancements that the parts will make to your car are reflected on handy graphs to help you instantly see what change they will make. The parts you purchase can affect your cars handling, top speed, overall strength, braking etc and while I wouldn't say that they changes made make a huge difference, upgrading is definitely worthwhile, especially if you want to keep your top speed competitive in the Street class.

It's a trade off though because while you would think that having blistering top speed in your car would be the cornerstone to winning every event, it's not always the case as you earn more money for smashing your opponents and earn nitro boost for smashing through the thousands of breakable objects that litter the tracks. In the races where you're able to speed out in front and stick there you'll lose out on the cash bonuses (and possible Achievements) gained from ramming opponents, smashing them through their windscreens and flipping them into a cart wheeling orgy of roadside shrapnel and car parts. But here lies the big complaint that I have to make against the game.

The majority of the A.I is fairly dumb. You'll notice that on average, it's usually the same drivers finishing in the top 5 and the same ones fighting it out down the bottom. The top drivers though definitely give you a run for your money and are more than happy to battle it out with you through any means necessary (which usually means ramming you as hard as possible off the track). Overall though the A.I does a solid job in as much as they don't blindly follow each other around the racing line and they're quite aggressive with each other. It's not uncommon to take a big jump, land it and see 2 or 3 opponents' barrel rolling beside you, smack into the ground destroying themselves and the scenery in the process. It's the moments such as this that make your experience in FlatOut feel totally unlike any other racing series going around.

So while the racing is hectic, violent and totally engrossing it's the key feature of the game - its physics - that also can be the games biggest hindrance. You'll be careering down a straight smashing the crap out of other cars on either side of you, see your moment and perform a fantastic PIT manoeuvre and while most of the time your opponent will be sent backwards and out of control, there's that other 20% of the time where their car will end up stuck on the front of yours slowing you down. You'll curse loudly while you end back in 12th place while you try to shake him off. The other problem is that while hundreds of tyres and other objects flying through the air might look really impressive, it all has to land somewhere. And when they're littering the track it becomes a mine field; some debris will harmlessly fly out of the way; some will end up sending you flying; and some will let you drive right over it with nary a bump.

This gets annoying because you'll do everything right, be in first place on the last lap and a stray rubbish can, post or car tyre will end up under your front end, flying you up into the air and out of control while the A.I catches up and overtakes you. This wouldn't be so annoying if it was consistent but that's the thing, rest assured that the A.I will consistently catch up, but there's no consistency between the physics on a lot of the objects that end up strewn about the track, and in your way. BugBear also acknowledges that you'll end up restarting many races because there's even a damn Achievement for it! While there's not much wrong with this game, it would be good to see an update released to address some of these physics problems. Perhaps if a car is stuck across the front of yours, hitting the nitro should send it flying off into the air? That would be another reward for aggressive driving and alleviate some of the frustration.

If you need a break from the racing though, the ragdoll-happy Stunt mini-games make a welcome return. You drive a special jet engine powered car and have to make the driver crash out through the windscreen, control his trajectory and slam him into giant dartboards, bowling pins, basket ball hoops and there's even a ‘Party Mode' (yes, just like Burnout) where you can setup Stunt events and get a bit of party game action happening. It sure beats Fuzion Frenzy – but then what doesn't? If you don't have any friends in real life then FlatOut works perfectly online with every game mode supported and even a few more just for good measure.

Up to 8 players can take part in any of the race events (spread across each of the locations), stunt modes and derbies but as well as those, there's a new Head On race mode and my favourite, the Death match Derby. Catering perhaps for shooter fans and those of us that just enjoy seeing people engulfed in gigantic fireballs the Death match Derby mode is an absolute blast. Taking place in any of the special or derby tracks the objective is (obviously) to be the last person left alive but in the midst of all the carnage as everyone is ramming each other into cubes there's power-ups that appear. One gives you more armour, another gives you more ramming ability, some multiply your points and the best one, the Bomb, inflicts massive damage on everyone around you. If their damage just happens to be too low, then you take them out instantly and satisfyingly listen to their anguish over your headset. The person hosting the game can choose from preset events or create their own with either all races, all derbies, all stunts or a selection of everything!

The audio in FlatOut Ultimate Carnage has its hits and misses. The cars themselves all sound fairly rumbly and mean. The sound effects from the scenery being smashed has a lot of variety as well but best of all the sound one of your opponents makes as they've been crunched through their front windscreen is a highlight. You'll be tearing down the track at 200khm or more, side swipe someone into a wall, tree or some other static part of the scenery and hear the satisfying sound of broken glass and someone screaming. Very satisfying! Sadly the same can't be said of the music which is pretty boring, generic rock tracks from bands we've never heard of and it probably won't be long until you turn it down.

Lastly it must be pointed out that I haven't even mentioned the graphics yet. Rest assured they're fantastic with some excellent lighting and dust effects. In particular the dust trails behind the cars on the dirt tracks are great and even obscure your vision, this was something even missing in Colin McRae DiRT's multi-car events. The graphics in FlatOut are no slouch and the cars in particular, while a little bit more ‘cartoonish' in appearance than say, Forza or DiRT, easily hold their own and feature impressively high polygon counts and smooth, curved, reflective surfaces. There's 11 other cars competing against your own and even with the screen filled with them smashing into each other, hundreds of objects flying everywhere and sunlight streaming through gaps in the trees, the framerate stays super smooth and rarely, if ever, takes a hit.