FlatOut: Head On - Hands On Preview

The FlatOut series has always been regarded by many as a 'poor man's Burnout', with various comparisons made between the two brands over the years. Steadily building up as the franchise has grown from its rather humble beginnings just a few years ago, FlatOut broke into the 'next-gen' towards the end of 2007with the launch of Ultimate Carnage on Xbox 360.

Next month however, the series will be breaking new ground as FlatOut launches on PSP, the first time that the franchise has made it onto a handheld platform. Essentially a port of Ultimate Carnage, which itself is a port of FlatOut 2 on Xbox and PlayStation 2, Head On's biggest challenge rests with how well the physics-driven gameplay copes on the cut down platform.

TVG got behind the wheel of the nearest jalopy to see how well the portable arcade racer is coming along...

Gentleman, Start Your Engines...

First off - FlatOut: Head On isn't being crafted by series developers BugBear Entertainment. Instead, the responsibility lies with a British team based in the 'ee by gum' city of Leeds. Despite their less than stellar work in the past however, SixByNine, seems to have taken their responsibility seriously.

Following in the footsteps of Ultimate Carnage last autumn, Head On includes the Carnage mode, a mix of races (including the Carnage events) and stunts that unlock additional events as players accumulate points. With the introduction of the Carnage mode in Ultimate Carnage (and its subsequent appearance in Head On), FlatOut has branched out into offering two solid single-player campaigns. The 'FlatOut' mode, which unlocks new vehicles that can be upgraded as the player's career progresses, follows a much more standardised racing structure of tournaments across three distinct vehicles types (Derby, Street, Race). Six different environments, from Forest and City to a variety of race tracks in different states of disrepair, will give gamers a decent enough mix of racing styles, though like so much of Head On it's all been seen before.

The racing action that FlatOut fans will have become accustomed to looks set to continue in Head On, with the impressive 4,000 physical objects per track having enough of an effect to matter - though it's a little short of the 5,000 objects used in FlatOut 2 on PS2. 'Enhanced' suspension that magnifies the effects of landing poorly from jumps, or reactions to any of those physical objects, will also be returning to great effect. The opponents themselves, cut down from the Xbox 360's twelve to the PS2's eight, continue their breathless pace to win races, with their thirst to cause added destruction throws a sliver of personality into what can be a rather cold genre. It also means that players have the added incentive of causing collisions strong enough to cause their rivals to career through the glass like a rag doll - their screams surely enough to cause concern to some gamers.

Beyond all that racing, the franchise's trademark mini-game stunts naturally make a return in Head On. After all, FlatOut without the stunts is a bit like Burnout without the Aftertouch (Ho hum.) Spread out across the dozen or so mini-games that take place from Darts, Curling, High Jump, and Ski Jump, all twisted to suit the FlatOut ethos of throwing your vehicle's driver as far or as high as he can go once thrown from the windscreen. Decent multiplayer options are also being built into the Head On experience, with SixByNine implementing not only an eight-player Party Mode, but also Infrastructure mode, something that is all too often forgotten about (or ignored) in PSP development. Linked to the stunts, the 'pass the PSP' gameplay will have obvious replay value in groups, especially during the distance-based events like Ski Jump or Rings of Fire.

Stunted Growth.

Key to FlatOut's arrival on PSP next month was Sony's decision to release a patch that finally let all 333MHz of processing power loose for developers to harness. Although there's the extra oomph allocated for use, there has to be some concern over the frame rate of the final game. At times during the preview, the game seemed to drop a little (specifically when vehicles ploughed through exploding fuel tanks), though considering the physics-driven bulk of FlatOut's gameplay, from the rag-doll animations of the driver smashing through the windscreen to telegraph poles, glass windows, and wire fencing, everything largely holds up.

Despite what it has to offer PSP gamers, especially first timers to the series, it's difficult not to think that FlatOut 2 is being flogged to within an inch of its life, used to push the franchise onto Xbox 360, and now, PSP. For fans of the series thinking this was going to be a new instalment in the franchise (albeit on a handheld). In fact, there's very little to get excited about here if you're a veteran of the series to date - we can only hope that this is the last time we'll have to race along the same old routes. Bring on FlatOut 3.