FlatOut 2 App Reviews

PROS:cool upgrade system and destructive cars and envirnments. CONS:this game can be pretty annoying.you cant steer your car while boosting and not only that but you cant start steering again for like a quarter of a second after you let go of the button which is a problem for a racing game ecspecially one like this plus there is no list of supported controllers in the description which seem to be a must have with this game.in adittion the tracks are long and have 3 laps so if you trip over a barrel at the end (which you probably will because of the controls) and you fall behing u have to restart which is a pain becuse of the length of the races.the graphics are usually uninteresting and the soundtrack doesnt really get your adreniline going in my opinion.the game also has these corny steriotypical looking characters that you race against which are probably only there so that you have more of a reason to be in first so one of their corny faces dont pop up in the bottom left corner of your screen.

These cars just wreck and deform wonderfully. FlatOut 2 is a quality demolition racer. The addition of upgrades to your car in each and every mode is certainly a plus, and the driving has a satisfyingly destructive vibe to it. Its just too bad that it doesnt have support for game center. Comparing stats with friends would have been to been to good to be true, I guess. The competion is sure to make you angry sometimes as they are unrealistically fast at times. Watch out for Sophia Martinez. Shes a keeper. Yet, there are plenty of lovable qualities to be found in FlatOut 2, especially if all you want is the basic racing gameplay as so many other racing games, but with a lot more of it. (MacBook Air, 1.7GHz i5)

LAN play does not work on Lion and Mountian Lion machines (tested with a Retina MacBook Pro running 10.8.3 & a Lion MacBook Air on 10.7.5). This is the only issue preventing it from being a "five star" game. Please fix.

Like racing games? Like destruction? Like speed? But you dont like the price? Then get this game. I dont know if the developper sold this game or what, but this app should SERIOUSLY be A LOT more expensive. Its one of the best racing games I know of ; SPEED+DESTRUCTION=SWEET GAME. Get it. P.S.: Apple, it would be nice if you put this in the racing category. I dont understand why it its not there already. UPDATE 1.0.4: NO MULTIPLAYER+ALL SINGLEPLAYER PROGRESS GONE!!! This game is REALLY great except for the fact that theres no multiplayer. Well you know, thats NOT the developers fault, its GAMESPYs fault, because they shut down recently. Also, I know about the bug with the nitro/steering. Well, you know what, THATs the new operating systems fault. If you simply change nitro from "ctrl" to "X", you wont have any more problems. UPDATE 1.0.6: Still no multiplayer… I will try ASAP to use Hamachi with the LAN mode, see if it works. Still the best Mac racing game I know of! P.S.: To the guy who wrote the comment above mine, please give it 5 stars and remap your nitro key to something another key. I suggest "x" for nitro (turbo, as you call it) and rear view to "shift".

This is actually a great game, something better than I originally expected. I love the carnage, the car/track design, and the races/stunts/derbies. First, lets talk about the positives. This is a good racing/crashing game. You crash into stuff and have tons of fun doing it! I like the destructible barriers, such as the start/finish line, tires, and fences. Smashing into other cars is great as well. Thats actually more fun than I expected it to be the first time. Racing is also fun, especially if you can invite some friends over and go racing together, thats always good fun as you never know who or what youre up against. The car selection is also good too, from old bangers to new and exciting muscle cars. The only thing that I need from that is exotics and more customization! The track design is good, with some harpin sections with some terrain changes and theres something for every racer. However, while that is said, there is some problems with this game. Many are glitches, but some are serious lack of effort, and some are suggestions. First of all, why cant we have a zero damage mode (IN SINGLEPLAYER) where your car (and other cars) take zero damage regardless of what happens to them? This is for people like me who sometimes like to race cleanly. Secondly, there is something very irritating to me, and that is the handling. THIS is a BIG issue. The issue with the handling is that the cars feel too floaty and sometimes have ridiclious amounts of understeer, oversteer, or both. Fix that so the handling is very direct, but a simulation of real life steering. Wake up and smell the bacon, Bugbear! Thirdly, there is the problem with the Test Track. On MacBookPro laptops, it is BROKEN! It Does. Not. Work. I kept hitting the delete key on my MacBookPro (Backspace) and it is not working. Fourth, add more cars into the starting grid! Make it 12, 16, or 20 cars so that more competitive racing works out. Fifth, there is the notourious framerate issue. This one is big. I keep lagging every two second in some races. The lag appears randomly and there is usually a lot of it, sometimes making the game unplayable. Sixth, why cant I use the cars I unlocked and bought and upgraded in Carreer for Single Races? You should allow me to do that. Bugbear! Seriously! Anyways, going back to the zero damage mode, why cant I have that? It should be an option for people like me who like to sometimes just race. You know, CLEAN racing! Seventh, Why not have a damage indicator on what parts of my car are damaged and how badly they are damaged. And finally, eighth, in the zero damage mode, allow us to not get our drivers thrown out the window. Anyways, I like the game, its got potential, but it needs a LOT of work! Overall Rating: 3.5 STARS (rounded up to four, reluctantly)

With the settings adjusted, this is a graphically impressive game on the Macbook Pro with Retina. Set the graphics to 2560x1600x32, and antialiasing to 3x, set in-game settings of draw distance, etc to maximum. If you want to tweak the settings, you won’t see the settings screen again unless you hold down the option key when you start the game. Graphics aside, this is a fun arcade style driving game with simple controls. There is also a car stunts option which is kind of a game in itself. I’d recommend Flatout 2. It runs very well but it has crashed a couple of times. Online play is no longer supported.

On the pirate version I can set up an USB controller ! and it also crashes less times than this new version, but that´s not the only issue, the game doen´t allow you to play On Line, so what´s the use of this game ! I want my money back !

Version 1.04 to version 1.07 and the nitro button STILL causes loss of steering and steering lock up issues…. Really??

PC cheat codes are not working in this version… seems like it would be a quick fix. Kind of annoying to have a game with a dedicated screen for entering codes when none of them work.

This game is awesome, the physics are spot on and the graphics are great. Only drawbacks are it locks up on macbook pro and you have to power computer off and back on to get it to respond. Also there is no online game support, I mean come on guys you made an awesome game now finish it up and see it through !!! Plenty of gear heads out there that would love to play one of the most realistic racing games ever made so why not turn this thing into an online phenomenon ?

Review is that, basically, it needs an update. I had previously reviewed this game while running Lion. And the game continued to be flawless on Mountain Lion. On Mavericks, it started to pick up issues. On Yosemite, it still has them. On OSX 10.8 and earlier, this is THE BEST racing game you’ll find in the Mac App Store. But until the developers push an update, if you’re running 10.9 or later, you probably needn’t bother with it.

Omg just to have my favorite game back from PS2 is incredible! The graphics, effects, all aspects. Just better, truly great job.

The new update the other day, while it does delete any data you had, did noticeably improve the graphics and framerate. I don’t use a controller, so I don’t personally know if usage was affected. It runs perfectly on the 2012 Macbook Pro If you really want anything in your old profile, you can just use cheats.

REVIEW UPDATE: Version 1.1.5 now seems to run, but all my profiles are gone even though this update supposedly fixed that problem. Hopefully I can still find a copy of my old ver. 1.0.7 and just play it. While I have enjoyed this game for many hours, the new version update 1.1.1 doesn’t work on my old iMac 2008. It constantly crashes and is unplayable. I had saved a copy of version 1.0.7 and reinstalled that one so I can still play.

Two versions ago I tried to play Flatout 2 and had problems with my controller that I contacted their support about. They responded quickly to inform me they had done a rewrite of their controller code in the porting system they use for their games which would include this one that should fix the problem. Well, the next version did sort of but then it would not save the settings and it kept crashing in the menu while I was trying to add them again. So, I contacted them again in the morning. They got right back to me the same morning and for the rest of the day we we went back and forth working on it. They helped me to get them a spindump log to assist them in finding the crash which I was able to reproduce reliably here. After that they finally could reproduce it too. Before the day was out they had fixed the crash and the saving issue and asked me to test it. Since there is an approval process for each app on the App store that takes time, they had me download the new version elsewhere for testing which I did and then tested thoroughly. I have background in software development and QA so I did a good job I’ll have you know. ;-) It tested out fine. Settings saved properly. I could not make it crash anymore. The game itself ran just great and I had fun for quite a while racing before I let them know all was well with 1.1.5. I did mention to them the issue of not being able to easily skip the intro video. I find that I sometimes can manage it and other times not. This is hardly a deal breaker but I hope they get around to fixing that at some point. It’s such a minor thing though that I won’t be shedding any tears if they don’t get around to it given other priorities. This is a very enjoyable racer that is easy to handle even with a keyboard I noticed although I personally greatly prefer a gamepad myself for racing games. I use the Logitech F-510 which has switchable modes to be compatible with either Xinput (Xbox) or DirectInput (analog) control and I forget now which mode I used here, I think it was analog but it worked beautifully. As far as I am concerned the game is perfect now. It runs, looks, handles and plays great. Flatout 2 is one of the most fun racers I’ve ever played with great tracks, destruction, turbo boost you gain the more stuff you crash into, nice damage modeling on the cars as you go along, replays after the races that are fun to watch, a system of gradually acquiring all kinds of cool vehicles, etc. For the regular asking price this game is a steal if you enjoy arcade style racing games. I’ve played this on OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 and 10.10.3 with zero problems. I understand for some folks the loss of their profile was painful and I don’t blame them for being unhappy about that. I would agree that situation should have been handled better somehow even if just with a warning before installing the upgrade if the older profiles are in any way a problem for the new version which is possible even if they seem to work initially. My advice here to avoid any such pain in the future from whatever game upgrade or any change to your system is to run Time Machine all the time on a desktop and often on a MacBook, etc. Then you can always recover from such things when recovery is actually possible. I don’t know if that would even be true for this case because the data saved to the profile about gamepads is probably different in the new version with rewritten code supporting controllers. All I can say there is, better to fix a game with problems even if it costs user data than to let it die because it becomes incompatible with OS X upgrades, etc. As for internet online multiplayer both the original Mac release of this game by Virtual Programming and the Windows release relied on the Gamespy service for this. Unfortunately, Gamespy closed down quite a while ago now and that is why multiplayer online doesn’t work. There may be some solution to this out there but I didn’t spend any time on Google looking for one. This game offers a lot of content to keep one busy having fun for a quite a while so personally, I’m okay with the loss of the multiplayer.

Update 1.1.8: I stand corrected they did do a little more. Anyway having a blast playing this. Later. Update 1.1.6: I really don’t see VP doing anything more after this update. I can live with it’s limitations. It’s still the most fun I have on my computer. @Swammy456 Pretty much covered it. Not having to turn off my screen saver each time is a blessing. It now remembers my Xbox controller settings. I am slowly increasing anti aliasing (@ 3x, now) until I break my video card. Oh did I mention how much fun it is to play :) Update: I have my old profile back now (what a nightmare). The game forgets my xBox controller settings. I have to reinput each time I play the game. The screensaver still activates during game play (old bug that is still around). Game seems a bit more stable now that I have my old profile back but I will update my review if I have crashes and lock-ups. Original review: Deleted my profile (took me years to get the cars I wanted). My Xbox controller no longer works. Locks up all the time.

OK, I refreshed my MBP and now have the 2014 i7 version with the 2GB 750m. The game works flawlessly, although always starts in windowed mode for some reason. CMD-F immediately after the nVidia spash screen fixes that. It’s fast, runs really great on all the max settings (did on my 2010 MBP too, so I’d expect so) but I wish there was an easier way to keep your profile. Every few updates or so seem to delete it, so I am updating with caution now. Thanks for fixing the controller sometime back. I use the Logitech controllers (basically identical to the PS3 ones) and it works really well. *** Updated Review after 1.1.6 This ‘minor’ update not only loses your profile, but no longer works on my MBP (Mid-2010 MBP, GT330M, i7, Yosemite) There should have been some warning that the game could be broken and the update may not work on older Macs.

So this new .5 update fixed the constant crashing I had from the prior version. The game actually runs fine now. Still lost my profile and had to start over. No noticeable change in graphics (setting on Max). More new bugs though. At launch youre presented with a window to choose some graphics options. It never remembers the settings. Every launch it seems to default back to 640x480. Windowed is not selected but at game launch it runs the intro video as my desktop (icons/dock visible). The game is unresponsive while the intros are running. Toggling fullscreen/window using the keyboard shortcut fixes the game launch issue. Theres really no point to upgrade. Theres nothing new, no gameplay changes. Online play still doesnt work. Steering while using nitro still doesnt work (it worked in earlier versions). Dont bother updating. Theres zero benefit. EDIT: Ive tried the latest .6 update. The window/full screen issue is now fixed. Its nice to see them actually working on issues. The game itself is fun and worth the time. One of the best driving games out there. Its not the most accurate in terms of a simulator but pure fun factor its 5 stars all day. My other issues are still present. Like others have mentioned, I cant skip the intro movie. Sometimes loading the game, after waiting through the movie, the keyboard is un-responsive and a force quit is required. It doesnt remember the resolution setting. I cant visually see any difference between the higher settings and 1080p of the prior versions. Im back to the pre-VP version again. The game just runs better on the old code. Thanks for the reviewer who left the tip about programming the nitro button to something other than control. Nice to uses nitro while turning again! EDIT: Finally decided to give this latest version a try. 1.1.8 has solved just about every issue I had. Easily skip the intro movies, game menus/options have a fast snappy response like the original versions. Only issue Im seeing now is it doesnt remember the video setting from session to session. Every launch its back to 640x480. Not a big deal. The game is FUN. If youre undecided on this game, get it! Its a ton of fun and these latest developers have taken care of all the complaints in the last few versions.

1.1.5 Hey Swammy, change the nitro key from “control” to something else on the Mac (like Z, if you don’t use shift) and then the car can steer through nitro! - windowed does not work right - app forgets settings with each launch The rest seems good and graphics seem faster. ===== 1.1.9 Simply the best racing game in the Mac Store right now (Oct 2015), even though it’s several years old. The physics are simply the best. 1.07 The turbo key had been “broken” on Mac, but the fix is simple. By default, turbo is mapped to the Mac control key. This causes steering to lock up because of how the Mac control key works. The fix is simple though: map it to another key! I moved it “X” and now the game is better than ever. All the crash and sound issues from earlier ports seem to be fixed. I played last night on the local LAN with someone else who bought 1.07 from Steam. No problem, no crashes, and loads of fun. It looks great on my late 2013 MBPro with retina display with all the graphics set to high or highest. It loves my 1080p monitor better though - a few less pixels to deal with. Heartily recommended! NOTE: the online (not LAN) option is available but is no longer supported. No big deal - just play Career or LAN.

My Logitech RumblePad 2 used to work great, but the stick axes were all scrambled after an update over a year ago, and have never been fixed. Only the buttons can be assigned. And now, for the SECOND time, an app update has deleted my player profile with ALL progress and settings, forcing me to start over completely from scratch. And lastly, the game has no audio after the first splash movie. Silence. (It sometimes crashes dead after that first movie too.) Not worth it. Used to be a VERY fun game if it still worked, but for me it doesn’t. (2013 Mac Pro, Yosemite.)