Flatout 4 or gas guzzlers upgrade#

The weaponry ranges from shotguns to machine guns, grenade launchers, mines, smoke and everything in-between. Races are formed of basic varieties that all loosely adhere to the mandate that going as fast as possible and blowing up whatever’s in your path will bring success. The on-track action sticks to a simplistic format that’s easy to pick up.

Flatout 4 or gas guzzlers upgrade#

You race, check your savings, upgrade and race again before logging out and coming back for more the next day.

There’s no clumsy story to trip over, no fancy exploding tracks or shape-shifting vehicles, just you, your garage full of ridiculous Reliant Robins and muscle cars adorned with stickers, sponsors all manner of ordinance, and a series of races in which to earn cash and purchase new engine parts, nitrous systems, bodywork upgrades and an ever-increasing arsenal of death.

This is absolutely unapologetic stuff, and that’s part of the charm. With that said, financially-backed games based entirely on weaponised cars are now rare enough to warrant a nostalgic treat, and those warm and fuzzy feelings are a large part of the enjoyment that Gas Guzzlers Extreme managed to wring from my PC over this past week. Somewhere back around the dawn of the Playstation 2 lies verdant enthusiasm for all things CARNAGE and ROADKILL, but there are few big publishers willing to test if it can be rekindled. It’s a genre that died a premature but entirely expected death a long, long time ago, having used up all its charm in a series of knock-offs of a formula that - let’s be realistic here - was a little bit of a novelty in the first place. As David Jaffe might lament over a few shots of whisky, vehicular combat games just ain’t what they used to be.