The problem is that the different vehicle classes don't seem to grip the terrain properly, making it feel like you are racing on glass instead of sand, mud, asphalt, or water. The one aspect that still needs work is the physics, which are extremely loose even for an arcade-style game. Players can also select a single race, single stunt, or a single derby from the menu screen. Earnings can then be used to purchase up to 34 vehicles (including compacts, pickup trucks, and racecars) or parts upgrades in six areas, from engines and exhausts to suspensions and gearboxes. Cash is doled out for each top-three finishers as well as for landing hits on rival vehicles, with bonus points awarded for causing wrecks, flipping cars over, and inflicting the most damage on the track.

From that point on, the action involves progressing through a series of themed cup races, mini-games, and destruction derbies to unlock subsequent events and earn some money. Players begin with 5,000 credits and a choice of three slow but stout derby vehicles. The career mode is once again the game's focus, only this time there are three vehicle classes to unlock as you advance through multiple events. The outdoor areas let you do both with reckless abandon. The arcade-style atmosphere wouldn't be complete without the ability to uproot trees and telephone poles like they were made out of papier-mâché, as FlatOut 2 is all about driving fast and hitting hard. Tires, fences, rocks, oil drums, and other objects will bounce, roll, and fly across the screen as if a hurricane were nearby. The courses have changed for the better as well, with each locale sporting multiple shortcuts, huge jumps, underground tunnels, lifelike scenery, and more flying bric-a-brac than a barroom brawl. Sixty course combinations are divided among forest, desert, field, canal, city, and traditional racetracks. While the core racing action remains the same, the 'meat' has been heaped on to gag-inducing levels.

FlatOut 2 aims to smooth out some of the original model's dents and dings, expanding nearly every facet of what made the first game a sleeper hit. It wasn't perfect, of course, but it certainly had some distinguishing features, none more so than the madcap mini-games that involved flinging a hapless driver through a car's windshield to hit bull's-eye targets. With its high-speed crashes and destruction derby events, the original FlatOut struck like a bolt from the blue for crash-crazed consumers.

Smoking the competition in a racing game is one thing, leaving the competition in a smoking heap of charred metal is quite another.

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