FlatOut 4: Total Insanity

Look past the scruffy visuals, because Flatout 4's penchant for vehicular violence means it passes its madcap MDT. [May 2017, p.92]

As its name implies this is an insane arcade racer that offers a kind of gameplay not so common these days. Flatout 4 is fun, crazy and enjoyable, albeit a bit repetitive in areas.

For fans of FlatOut your patience has been rewarded; the series has reached its zenith at a time when nobody expected it to resurge, let alone do so with such brutal conviction. For the rest of you, FlatOut 4 is the perfect antithesis of all those sensible racers out there; a real, rough around the edges prospect that demands your attention.

Flatout 4 is back on track. It takes a while to get into, but once you’re hooked to this arcade racer, you’ll look past its loose controls and the AI flaws.

Worth a look if you enjoy the idea of racing but find it can be a bit boring… throw in some explosions and falling buildings and it may just keep you going.

FlatOut rises from its ashes with a little-more-than-average new chapter full of craziness, hi-octane speed and some annoying flaws.

Aside from a few annoyances and occasionally unfair difficulty, I found myself always coming back for more with FlatOut 4, and one hour would often turn into three-hour play sessions. It was just plain fun to play, and sometimes a game doesn't need to be more than that.

Flatout 4 Total Insanity for PS4 has many game modes and minigames, but it´s poor controls and unrealistic physics engine ruin the arcade driving experience.

FlatOut 4 improves the good points of its predecessor and bring new features. However, it does not achieve to be as good as the first titles of the saga.

Fallout 4 is a good game under different aspects. Fast and funny, gives different hours of fun for the players who are looking for a dirty and destructive racing game.

Nothing in it really shines, but it's definitely enjoyable, and the lack of arcade racers like this makes FlatOut 4 a good choice for fans for the genre.

FlatOut 4 is a surprise - after a weak part 3 here comes a game that is OK. But beware - it's not aimed at FlatOut fans. Its borderline "arcadeness" can discourage fans of F1 and F2. But if you like Burnout or even MotorStorm, give it a chance and don't let the wonky physics scare you away.

Once you do get racing against other players of similar skills then any sense of fair play goes out of the window and you use every dirty trick and underhand tactic to get in to first place. With eight racers the crashes can be spectacular pile ups with cars, logs, and half a house smashing across the race track in front of you, and, as previously mentioned a lot of swearing, but a lot of laughs as well. Silly fun, and well worth your cash.

Kylotonn has dredged this near-forgotten racing rebel from the very bottom of the barrel and fashioned it into a basic but fun, stunt-filled speedster, but I found myself regularly frustrated with its repetitive career mode, its stingy economy and nebulous unlockables, its superficial demolition derby events, and its uneven difficulty. A respectable franchise rescue mission but one that still needs some fine tuning and some extra grunt.

FlatOut 4: Total Insanity is a fun, nitro-boosted jaunt down memory lane. But while it's good in small does, its lack of variety - in spite a plethora of game modes - and uneven and sometimes frustrating racing experience leaves it running out of gas. Die hard franchise stalwarts should definitely have a look, but newcomers may find it tiring.

FlatOut 4 tries so hard to be good, but the story mode is quite boring, the IA is unbalanced and the mini-game section is fun, but forgettable in the long run.

FlatOut 4 could have been a much better experience if its car physics were improved and it had a more varied career mode. As it is, it's an uneven mix of fun and frustration. It brings back some pleasant memories of similar titles but it's unlikely to create any of its own.

Flatout’s schtick is its physics-heavy racing, but that engine is antiquated now. Like the nitro it ungenerously ekes out – fun in short bursts only [May 2017, p79]

Quotation forthcoming.

It's certainly a total insanity, but not so funny so we would expect. The races become boring in no time, the sense of progress is bad and physics are poor, which is something important in this kind of games.

FlatOut 4 is quite fun at times, though the visual damage on cars isn't all that impressive and some vehicles are almost impossible to properly control.

Perhaps the main takeaway here is that FlatOut 4: Total Insanity is safer than its name suggests. There's not a lot to criticise in terms of its execution, but its ambition feels firmly rooted in the PlayStation 2 era. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, and if you're looking for a distraction to occupy between juggernaut releases, then the PS4 isn't host to many destructive racers that are better. But while there's fun to be had while you're playing, don't expect this above average car crash to live long in the memory at all.

FlatOut 4: Total Insanity is quite an improvement over the last game in the franchise. This is a competent car game, not excelling at anything but merely holding its own. You can get better racers or derbies out of a handful of other games, but its stunts are unique and enjoyable. They alone are worth a purchase if you’re in amongst a group of rev heads with nothing to do on a Friday night.

It's an irrelevant racing game with a core idea that is out of date by now.

Flatout 4 doesn’t bring anything noteworthy to the series, and while the Flatout and party modes are good for some low stakes enjoyment, the grind of single-player progression is too much to bare. The challenge is borderline unfair at times, and that wrecks the partytime nature that the series used to do so well.

We tried very hard to like FlatOut 4, but we simply couldn't. Despite some fun game modes and a decent multiplayer offering, the gameplay is overall confusing and bugs are everywhere. And the steep price doesn't help either.

FlatOut 4 is an average "destruction racer" that fails to deliver a constant dose of fun to the player, who is mostly frustrated by the collisions.

FlatOut 4 is a frequently irritating game that's held down by incredible amounts of grind, it has some saving graces with a variety of game modes and track types, but they don't do enough to balance out against the negatives like AI, physics and more.

There is not much to praise in FlatOut 4: Total Insanity. The FaltOut mode is fun and brings back some good old memories, but everything else is trash. Sad for an IP that had its fans back in the day.

With its weird physics issues and inept AI, FlatOut 4 is a frustrating game that simply disappoints on every level.