FlatOut 3: Chaos & Destruction

Almost 10 years after its debut, Flatout 3 remained the most harshly rated game on all of the Steam library. That's 50 thousand games this is supposedly worse than. Quite the accomplishment, especially considering there's no additional controversy attached to this. There's no dlc, microtransactions, or scumminess on the dev's part.
On a side note, the title of 'Literally the Worst Game Ever Made' has been retracted and handed over to the new king of bad video games on Steam, Overwatch 2! Good luck dethroning that one, suckers.

Being the racing game obsessive that I am, and a huge fan of Flatout 2 (Flatout 1 and Ultimate Carnage are essentially the same game as Flatout 2 to varying degrees), Flatout 3 seems like an obvious punching bag for me to wail on. But after playing it, I wouldn't consider it the worst racing game I've ever played, let alone the king of the unholy Trash Mountain that makes up the foundation of the Steam library. By no means should you waste your money on this, but I feel as if a respectable amount of effort went into making this game into a memorable experience, even though it ended up being a mess.

You might be wondering why this game exists in the first place, and why it's called 'Flatout 3' despite technically being the 6th game in the series. The straightforward answer is that Empire Interactive, the publisher of Flatout 2, went out of business after the release of Flatout Ultimate Carnage/Head On. The Flatout IP was scooped up by Zoo Games, leading to the release of Flatout on the Wii. The IP was immediately scooped up again by Strategy First (publishers of classics such as Bad Rats), who still own the IP to this day. In a quick cash grab move, Strategy First opted to make a sequel to the most lucrative IP they had obtained. Flatout 3 was handed over to budget game-makers Team6 (the same people who made Flatout for the Wii in 2010), who presumably were given less than a year to come up with some kind of spiritual followup to the beloved Flatout 2.

I can only assume the team knew they would not be able to come up with a physics engine comparable to the previous Flatout games. Instead, the majority of their work seemingly went into the tangible contents of the game. Flatout 3 contains just under fifty different cars to play as, which is slightly more than Flatout 2's count. You can also choose between 3 different colors for each one. Most of these vehicles are references to real cars, including some 'car nerd' favorites like the '59 Cadillac de Ville, Chrysler Turbine Car, Shelby Cobra, and Caparo T1. Some silly ones are also tossed in, such as a double decker bus and a tractor.

Unfortunately, every car in the game drives as poorly as each other in nearly the same way. The steering wheel will not cooperate with you, feeling more like you're controlling a speedboat in fast-forward. Keeping your vehicle moving in a straight line will prove to be difficult, which is especially unfortunate as the very first track I played was in an urban setting that was entirely made up of straight lines and 90 degree angles. There's no weight to anything, so the AI cars bounce off of each other like pinballs. The gravity feels completely off, as well. Far too heavy of a pull downward after jumps. The rubberbanding from previous Flatout games is also gone, so you'll be left in the dust. A dizzied, confused player, fighting the futility of getting your car to stay on the track. It doesn't matter which mode you pick. It's going to feel like trash.

The track list is respectable at least, featuring 21 different unique tracks (not including reverse versions) and around 10 different arenas stretched across various game modes. This includes Flatout's own bootleg version of Nurburgring GP, which has been adorned with apocalyptic earthquake crevices and fire, turning it into a LITERAL Green Hell. The visual design of these tracks are creative for the most part, though there's too much brown and orange going on in the color wheel. My only other complaint would be that some of these tracks last far too long. Laps of the Japan Super Speed track last over 2 minutes on average, which seems like too much even for a track based on the Malaysian GP.

Flatout 3 was an ambitious title for Team6, but they couldn't shake off its shovelware jank. It makes for an amusing experience, with enough content to keep you busy for a little while. But very little of the experience will be genuinely enjoyable. This experience can't compare to the enjoyment of playing earlier Flatout games.