If you were a PlayStation 2 gamer, there is a very good chance you have come across the excessively fun racing game franchise known as Flatout, but you might not even remember them, since they eventually faded into obscurity: let’s take a look at what happened, and what the situation is with regards to a Flatout 5 potentially being developed. Right, let’s get into it.
Flatout 2 was considered the king of all gruesome damage and car combat games and held that mantle for nearly two decades. Car-on-car combat games were completely revolutionized by what is, to this day, considered the pioneer of demolition derby video gaming. Considering the widespread and extensive success of Flatout 2, fans were eagerly waiting for the third addition to the franchise. There indeed was one, but unfortunately, a tragedy had occurred behind the scenes that led to the absolute disaster of a video game that was Flatout 3. Unfortunately, the original developers of the game, Bugbear studios, lost the rights to the franchise, and they were gobbled up by the Dutch studio known as Team6. They are now notorious among the gaming community for having ruined a cult classic franchise and allowed it to be featured on lists like this one, which ranked Flatout 3 as #17 in the top 50 worst games of all time. Talk about a fall from grace. The previously silly and enjoyable physics of the game was replaced by a weak attempt at recreating reality, and worst of all, the damage model which was one of the main draws of Flatout 2 was completely reworked, resulting in a bland and lazy-looking damage model in a game whose main focus is demolition derbies. Team6 quickly rescinded the rights to the franchise, and french developer Kylotonn bought the rights to it. Unfortunately, they were not able to salvage anything from the mess of a reputation that the game now had, with Flatout 4. They are still theoretically the owners of the rights to the game but seem absolutely unwilling to have to do anything with it. Seems as though a Flatout 5 is extremely unlikely to ever happen.
