With FlatOut Ultimate Carnage the FlatOut franchise returns to the PC. But it does so in a manner that if any of the following FlatOut games on the PC are as good as this one that noone will probably buy any of them.

I didn’t make any screenshots of it, but if you want some I suggest checking out various game sites like gamespot.com or mobygames.com 

It’s bad
So is FlatOut Ultimate Carnage bad? I say yes and there are three main reasons for it being bad:
1. Performance
2. 100% equal to XBox 360 version
3. Cheat AI

Performance
Let’s begin with the worst thing, the performance. This game does have slightly improved graphics over FlatOut 2, but these minor enhancements are not even the main cause of the game’s horrible performance. I used to run Flatout 2 on my PC Slashdev before the motherboard had been replaced with a newer one when the old one died and before I upgraded it with a new graphicscard and before I doubled the RAM. It still has the same Athlon 64 3200+ CPU, but instead of the GeForce 6600GT AGP it now has a GeForce 7600GS PCI-E with 512MB and now it has 2GB of RAM instead of just 1. FlatOut 2 always ran perfectly at 1280×1024 with 4x anti aliassing, 16x anisotropic filtering and all in game details set to the highest possible setting and it looked great. If I’d play it now I’d still say that it looks great. But now there is FlatOut Ultimate Carnage. From the screenshots it seems that it looks about the same as FlatOut 2, which it does, with a few minor enhancements. The cars look slightly shinier and there is a nice looking Need For Speed Underground like motion blurring which really adds to the sensation of speed in the game, weren’t it for the slow frame rate. In fact, the frame rate is so bad that the game is hardly playable. This was ofcourse at 1280×1024 (monitor doesn’t take any more) and 16x anisotropic filtering. I was kind of surprised by the fact that there is no anti aliassing available here. So then I started tuning down the graphics a bit. I set the details to medium and tried again. But I noticed no difference at all. So I set it all to low. Still no difference. Then I turned down the resolution to 1024×768, still running on low details, but still no difference in performance. Still the same low frame rate, but now looking a lot worse than before. SO I tried setting the resolution to 800×600, but still no difference and now it was starting to get on my nerves. So I decided to set the resolution to the lowest possible setting (640×480) and now finally there was somewhat of a difference, but still the game suffers from a highly unstable frame rate and hickups are more common than smooth gameplay. I assure you that on this setting the game looks nowhere near as good as FlatOut 2 on the same system.

Ported
The second bad thing is that this version is literally the same as the XBox 360 version. Well, you might say that that is normal with a port and I say yes to that, but is it also normal to have the tutorials and menu’s completely unchanged? I mean, it says Press Start, but I don’t even have a Start button on my keyboard. It also says X to continue, Y to cancel… Well, I can push as many and as hard as I can on X or Y but nothing happens. Yeah, Press Y for a tutorials or press X to start. Neither key on my keyboard does anything there. You might expect from PC gamers that they know which keys to press at certain times, but even then, this is unacceptable and just plain awfull. As for the rest of the game, it’s ok that it’s the same, I mean, it’s a port after all.

Horrible AI
And lastly, the horrible cheating AI. The AI in FlatOut 2 wasn’t completely fair with it’s catch-up system, just as seen in many other race games. The one with the worst catch-up AI was the first Need For Speed Underground game. In which nearly every car would exceed it’s maximum speed just to stay close to the player. The same thing happens in both both FlatOut 2 and FlatOut Ultimate Carnage, but in FlatOut 2 it’s just not as obvious as in FlatOut Ultimate Carnage. No matter what you do, you are always being overtaken. You take a corner with the fastest car on the field with maximum speed and minimum speed los and the slowest car on the field just comes by and takes you over. It’s ok that I am being overtaken by an opponent, but not like this, it makes no sense and just feels plain unfair.

Some good things
However, there are also some slightly good things to mention about FlatOut Ultimate Carnage. There are some new cars, new tracks and new race modes. The cars really aren’t new, but they are remakes of the cars from FlatOut 1. On a console that didn’t have either FlatOut 1 or 2 on it, this is ok, but really, as a new game on a system which allready has both, this does seem a bit uninspired to say the least, but still, it has some more cars, which is good. New tracks are really new as far as I know. Which is also good, more tracks equals more fun. And there are some new race modes. One of them is Beat the Bomb, which is actually nothing more than a time trial with a time limit. When the limit is exceeded, the car explodes and the game ends. Then there is the Demolition Deathmatch. Pretty much the same as Demolition Derby races in FlatOut 2, but then with multiple lives and powerups. Not much of an addition in my opinion, but still it’s good fun. And lastly there are the time trials. These are rather dull though as you can drive only one lap and then the game ends. In most games it’s the way I like it, just drive a few laps as fast as you can, maybe add a ghost car so you can see how you are driving compared to the record. It is cool however that there are more cars on the track in this game then there were in FlatOut 2, which should provide for more intense racing and crashing action, if the game would run a little better.

Carnage Mode
And then there is the Carnage Mode. This is some kind of challenge mode in which you must win challenges to unlock more challenges untill you have beaten them all. I think this can be really fun, as it can really test your skills, but due to the horrible performance, most are impossible to beat, but I think that on the XBox 360 these challenges can be very cool.

The Sound track
FlatOut 2 had a really nice, rocking soundtrack. Ofcourse this is not everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s impossible to say that FlatOut Ultimate Carnage has a soundtrack that even comes close to being good. Most songs are dull and uninspired and don’t fit the game at all.
The sound effects on the other hand are good, but overall the sound effects just sound the same as FlatOut 2. If only the musical soundtrack was even somewhere near as good as the soundtrack of FlatOut 2.

The bottom line
If you have FlatOut 2, then there is absolutely no reason to buy the PC version of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage. If you don’t have FlatOut 2, then there is also no reason to buy the PC version of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage. If you have FlatOut 2 and you are really desperate for more, then this is a good time to consider buying an XBox 360 and get the XBox 360 version of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage with it, or just get the XBox 360 version if you allready have an XBox 360. If you don’t have FlatOut 2, then get that one instead or consider getting an XBox 360 with the XBox 360 version of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage or just the game if you allready have an XBox 360.

Basicly, all I just said is this; avoid the PC version of FlatOut Ultimate Carnage at all costs. I´m not even going to give this one a score.

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It is now that I really want to say something about one of the greatest games of all time. You see, I have finished it again yesterday (all 3 endings) and again I have seen things that I had never seen before. I’ve finished it so many times allready that I lost count at 20 or something and for those who do not know what Deus Ex is, here is a link and another one.

I would think that the things I’ve seen on this run are probably all documented on the internet somewhere, but I still find it amazing that after all these years (it was released in 2000) and all the times that I’ve run through this game I still notice things that I hadn’t seen before. First thing I noticed was that you can actually fight two bosses twice. I allready knew about Anna Nevarre. You can just run away and get captured by Gunther Hermann when you get out of the subway station in Battery Park or you can fight her, but not kill her. At a certain point she will just start running around, like all damaged enemies do and then you can let her live and continue to get captured. Later on, when you get back to Unatco HQ you will face her again. I found that out on the first run I ever did, so that wasn’t new. But it is also possible to run into Walton Simons for a fight twice. First time is when you have retrieved the schematic for the UC from the ocean la. Pretty much the same happens as with Nevarre, he will start running around like an idiot when you hit him good a few times and then you just leave him. The result is that you will run into him again when you get to Area 51. I did a quick search for this, but I didn’t find any articles that confirmed this, but I’m still pretty sure that I’m not the first to do this, but if you didn’t know it, now you can check it out for yourself.

And the last thing was really stupid actually. At the missile silo where you get to reconfigure the missile launch to hit Area 51 instead of X51, you can find a datacube sitting on a table in the guard shack with names on it of killed scientists and 1 captured scientist. Then later inside the launch facility there is a little bathroom where the scientist is locked in and gives you some useless information.

Just too bad I didn’t take any screenshots of these things… Should have FRAPS running for cases like this… Maybe I’ll do that some other time, but for now it’s going to be Deus Ex: Invisible War once more, so that I finish that one again before Deus Ex 3 is released. I’m pretty sure that I’m going to buy that one as soon as it’s released and I’ll most likely write a very extensive post about it whenever I have played it to tell you all how awsome it is.

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Hey everyone, I just felt like posting today really. It’s odd, I don’t have anything new to show off to any of you, but that doesn’t matter. I would like to talk about EvE Online today and since I’m ill I don’t have anything usefull to do anyway.

So, for anyone who knows what MMO games are, but don’t know EvE, click here. That is a link to the EvE Online homepage.

You may think something like this: “Well, EvE online is just another MMO game”, but I think differently about that. I’m not going to say that EvE is the only decent MMO game out there, but it surely unique when compared to most others. Unlike most MMO games, which have a more or less medieval-ish setting, EvE is a futuristic sci-fi space set game. Most games use a level based character system. For example in World of Warcraft (WoW) you create a character and grind it up to max level (70 at this point I think) and then it’s all over. It’s more or less a single player experience which has a very clear goal and once that goal has been reached it’s over. You can continue playing in the world ofcourse, but you can’t build up your character anymore, or you must eliminate certain skills to make room for others and more or less start over. Or you can create a new character and do the whole thing just once more. I picked WoW as an example here, because it’s one of the most well known MMO games out there. I figure that games like Guildwars and City of Heroes/City of Vilains aren’t very different from that same concept, but EvE Online is different.

Like in any MMO game you create a character when you start playing EvE. You choose your race (there are four) and then you choose your bloodline, background, ancestry and all that stuff and you answer a series of questions. This will result in a list of skills you will start off with. But unlike other MMO games you don’t level up your character. In other MMO games you will get experience points (XP) by running errands for non playable characters (NPCs) and killing NPC enemies and things like that. In EvE you can’t gain XP by the so called grinding I just mentioned. Instead of grinding there is a learning system. You have five attributes: charisma, intelligence, perception, memory and willpower. There attributes determine how quick the learning will progress. You buy a skillbook on the ingame market en start training a skill. Depending on your attributes this will take a certain amount of time. The first level will usually take only up to an hour to complete, but the final level (level 5) can take several days, or even weeks to complete. This may seem long at first, but it’s something you get accustomed to very quickly and it will put you up against important decisions like: “Am I going to wait 3 weeks to get 5% extra damage on my guns, or is it not worth the wait and should I continue with another skill?”. Even though 5% may seem just a tiny little bit, the percentatges of upgrades and skill level percentages will often result in this little 5% making a big difference.

While playing you won’t really get to see your character though, but you can customize it’s portrait which will be visible to anyone and will be something of a trademark for you character. You will create this portrait just before you will enter the game for real the first time. This can be done only once, so you must be really sure that it is just as you want it to be, because the possibilities of deforming, morphing the face are nearly endless and you can add accesories like sunglasses and doodles like face tatoos and weird haircuts which makes it even fun to play around with that for a while. Here are some examples of character portraits. I’ve sized them down a little though, because the captures you can make in game are pretty large.

The first one (top left) is my character, which is a Minmatar Brutor male, the second one is a Minmatar Vherokior female, the third one is also a Minmatar Brutor male, then an Amarr Amarr female, then a Minmatar Sebiestor male and lastly a Gallente Intaki male. Now since I have started talking about the names of races and bloodlines I might as well tell you which ones there are. The races are Caldari, Amarr, Gallente and Minmatar. I’m not going to tell everything about the bloodlines and such here, because you can read the basic information about this here.

As you can see the variety in possible portraits is huge, even the two Brutors look distinctively different even though the base of both was exactly the same. In most of the footage that I have seen from other MMO games like WoW most characters look basicly the same anyway, so not being able to customize the rest of the characters looks which you don’t get to see anyway doesn’t matter in any way. At least, not to me. Something that would be nice though would be the ability to customize your ship’s look. So a bunch of 50 Rifter class frigates will all look exactly the same. But this lack of customizability is greatly compensated by the sheer number of ships available for you to use. Beginning at the frigate class which are small and fragile ships mostly used by beginning players in the protected empire space, but also used by experienced players as cheap expendable ships to use to tackle bigger enemy ships so they can be taken out by the larger craft in the fleet. All the way up to the Titans which are the largest of the largest ships in the game. In between are ship classes like destroyers, cruisers, battlecruisers, battleships, dreadnaughts, carriers, motherships which are all more or less suitable for combat. Besides that there are also ships that are not suitable for combat, but are industry based: industrial, mining barge, capital industrial. And then there are tech 2 variants of many of the ships, like assault ships which are stronger versions of frigates, heavy assault ships which are superior versions of cruisers, command ships which are specialized versions of battlecruisers to boost a fleet’s abilities and so on… The protected empire space I mentioned earlier is more or less the controlled environment of the game. The is police here in the form of Concord ships which are ships that are not available as playable ships. The come as frigates, cruisers and battleships and customs, which are ships that are available as playable ships. In this space you can mostly fly around safely without the risk of being attacked by another player, but the possibilities to develop your experience are somewhat limited. On the edge of the empire space there are the low security systems. These do still belong to the empire, but there is little to no Concord or customs here to protect you so it’s a potentially dangerous area. But it also enhances your possibilities. For instance capital ships (dreadnaughts, carriers, titans and capital industrial ships) can’t enter empire, because they can’t use stargates and need to use so called cyno fields which can’t be raised in empire to lock their jumpdrives on to jump into another system. And then there is also the 0.0 space, which doesn’t have any form of control by customs or Concord at all and is mostly dominated by alliances made up of actual players who really control the space there and enforce their own laws and rules. Of course this space offers the best opportunities in the game as it is here where you’ll find the most valuable ore as a miner or the best NPC enemies to fight as a so called ratter. Also if you’re looking for intense fleet warfare this is the space you’ll want to be as it is here where the big fights are taking place to conquer or protect a piece of space against the enemy, which is not NPC controlled in this case. Ofcourse you can join an existing corporation (corp), which is more or less the same as a guild in WoW for example, or you can create your own and start building it up and then you can either create or join an existing alliance to protect your assets or to create a bigger operation for yourself as well as your members.

And then there is the market, this is really something completely different as seen in other games as it is almost completely player controlled instead of NPC seeded. You can build ships and other items and offer them for sale on the market. The prices fluctuate just as they do in the real world and good ore prices for example can make you very rich if you play your cards right. The entire economical system is watched by guy with a ph.d in economics and he even releases regular reports on the game’s economy and the developer only interferes if things are getting really out of hand. But that is really something that you’ll have to see for yourself.

Anyway, I think I’ve typed enough for now. I haven’t told you but a fraction of what you can do and see in this game and talking about it like this can fill an entire book I think, but you’ll just have to see it for yourself. And why not try a mere 14 day free trial. Not that you’ll see that much as even some features are locked during the trial period to protect the game’s balance and all that kind of jazz, but it can give you a very good impression of the game’s possibilities and the great community behind it. As a last thing, here are some screenshots I’ve taken over the past few days. No combat is displayed in it, as I’m not a combat player, but you can see how great this game looks while the interface is hidden. Please note these shots are fairly large (1680×1050).

Now, after seeing those images you’ll surely want to play, so click here and set up your free 14 day trial

And if you’re looking for me ingame, my character’s name is Zhooibaal

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