Flatout: Ultimate Carnage is on steam today for $2 as part of a 24 hour sale (with ~13 hours left).
I used to play Flatout 2 online and it was a lot of fun. Fallout: UC is basically an enhanced remake of the same game with better graphics, more destructable objects, and some new game modes.
It’s an arcade racer with a focus on demolition, sort of like burnout but (IMO) more fun. You gain turbo boost by wrecking other people’s cars and all sorts of different world objects. There’s also a demolition derby mode where everyone runs around a parking lot or an arena and tries to blow everyone else up. It’s pure arcade destruction racer fun.
Anyway, I told all my friends about it and it looks like we got 10-12 SDMBers to get it so far. So I figured I’d start a seperate thread where we could coordinate getting bigger games together. The steam page says the online play is limited to 8 at a time, but some forum posts seem to indicate that you can get it up to 12 somehow. I don’t know what the case is yet. 8 would be enough, but 12 would be awesome.
The controls are simple enough that it plays decently with a keyboard, but you’ll want to have a gamepad or joystick or wheel optimally. Actually the steam page says it doesn’t support wheels which is strange, but forum posts seem to hint otherwise.
If you have the game and you haven’t played with other SDMBers yet, join our steam group and in particular add me (same name, senorbeef) to your friends list. I’ll keep you updated. Everyone else… roll the dice for two bucks and get the game with us.
I picked it up on a whim, but unfortunately it apparently doesn’t play well with Wine, so I may not be able to join in the fun and games. It’s downloading now and I’ll give it a spin this week.
Minor problem - to those who downloaded the game by late afternoon or later (which is probably all of us) they actually sold so many that they ran out of CD keys by then, so you can’t play yet. This has happened about 3 times before and it usually gets resolved by the next day by getting new batch of keys from the publisher, so it should be worked out soon.
Seems kinda silly since it’s all digital distribution, but I guess for some games that are key dependent valve bigs big blocks of keys at a time from a publisher and if you get a sudden huge demand (like if you sell a game for 90% off…) you can run out.
Good news - the flatout keys are in in, I just launched the game and got one.
Odd nes - it’s downloading 1.6gb worth of … something. I downloaded the full game of 4.5 gb yesterday, so what this 1.6gb could be I have no idea whatosever.
Anyway, start the process of playing the game so you’re sure to get your key.
Okay, game is up and working.
This a games for windows live game unfortunately (although at least that makes it a little easier to invite/get together in game) so you’ll need a live ID. Don’t sign up for an offline account because you’ll just have to make a new account anyway to play multiplayer with us.
If you already have a live ID, like an xbox live tag, or a hotmail address, or an MSN messenger id, you can log into that. Otherwise you have to create it which is free and only takes a minute. If you already have a game with GFWL, it’ll auto detect your account and you just log in.
You can send a friends request to me (senorbeef0) so I have everyone available to invite.
I downloaded the game yesterday and after I got the key this morning it wanted to download another 1.6gb worth of stuff. What I have no idea, but just be aware that if we get games going tonight you’ll want to be sure to launch the game early to give you time to get that extra 1.6gb - assuming my experience was normal.
It natively detects and supports the xbox 360 controller. Other gamepads will probably work. The game’s description says it doesn’t support wheels, but it gave me the option of playing with my G27, although I haven’t actually tried yet. The controls are simple enough that you can get by and not be completely lost with a keyboard, but any analog control (even a joystick) would be better.
Anyway, I’m anxious to start blowing people up, so I’m probably going to try to get some games going tonight. If you want in, make sure you’re all setup and ready to go.
Edit: If the game uses the games for windows live voice chat like dirt 2, then the voice chat sucks. In that case we’ll use ventrilo for voice chat.
One more thing. Apparently some people have a problem where the game won’t launch correctly. I’m told a solution is to go to the folder \steam\steamapps\common\flatout ultimate carnage\support and run the xliveredist msi file. Once that installs you should be able to play.
Don’t do that if it’s working normally though like mine did.
Well that was fun, we had 8 of us going at it tonight. I was hoping the game allowed 12 people to play online together, but apparently 12 is only for AI racers in single player, and online is still limited to 8. Too bad.
It has all the good stuff about flatout 2 with some extras. The graphics are better and it has some new game modes. The “head on” type of race is set up so that instead of doing the same lap over and over when you get to the end of a lap you have to pull a quick u-turn and run the lap the other way… while the people behind you are still finishing the lap going forward. Pure genius.
The other mode is a deathmatch demolition derby where you respawn when you die and you try to get as many kills as you can in a time limit. That one has been a lot of fun.
The only thing that sucks about it, and this was a flaw with flatout 2, is that the multiplayer car balance sucks. The cars were really designed for the single player experience, where you had a clear upgrade from one to the next, so throwing them all together online where anyone can pick the best cars leads to a lot of people choosing the same car, which is lame. They did add a few extra cars to the game at the top tier to give it a little more variety.
I was actually thinking we could use that as a handicap system… those of us who are more experienced at racing games can take the lower tier cars while the newer players can take the better ones.
We’ll probably be able to fill a game through most of the afternoon tomorrow, so if you haven’t yet, make sure you download and setup the game. If you have a problem getting it to run the first time, the fix is in post #7 of this thread.
Oh, and ventrilo too - the games for windows live voice chat sucks and the games are much more fun with voice chat.
We had a few big games going before I ended up going out of town for 2 months when no one else organized them. Well I figured we’d give it a few more gos. I’m gonna be organizing a flatout UC game around 7:30-8 eastern tonight, make sure your game is setup.
Edit: Have ventrilo setup too, since it uses gfwl voice chat which sucks.