Abysmal graphics (note the big sparks) drag races down at every turn.

Zero road feel and moronic AI stand between you and racing enjoyment.

The Monster Truck mode seems to want to breed. Good thing it's neutered.

Stunt Man mode is funny for about five seconds.

Any fond memories you may have of this once-proud smash 'em up racing franchise will themselves be reduced to flaming, totaled wrecks as soon as you run Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction.Developed by Netherlands-based Team 6 Game Studios , Flatout 3 has nothing in common with the high-quality, Bugbear-developed Flatout games of years past. The rustic charm of the original demolition racers, with their wonderfully damageable backwoods vehicles and inventive track layouts, has given way to a collection of coarsely rendered cars, trucks, and racing venues that look to have been compiled with pre-DirectX graphic technology from a decade ago.How ugly is it? When I took my first spin in the appropriately named "Grinder" classic muscle car, it took exactly one corner before the surrounding scenery disintegrated into a pixelated mess of explosions, flashing lights (I think those were meant to be flames), and toothpick-shaped sparks. There are only a few driving views—bumper cam or vision-obscuring chase cams—so it was hard to do a proper sightseeing tour, but that was clearly a blessing in disguise. The fictional urban and countryside driving locations are nothing more than obstacle-choked (some destructible, most not) bottlenecks that are about as attractive and speed-enabling as your local landfill.In an attempt to flesh out Flatout 3's gameplay depth, the developers inflated the single-player experience to include nine different disciplines—Race; Challenge; Off Road; Night Shift; Speed; Monster Trucks; Battle Arena; Big Battle; and Stunt Man. There is no proper career mode to follow and, as intriguing as some of these variants sound, none are likely to sustain your interest for more than a few minutes. That's partly due to the coarse graphics, but more because of the complete lack of any vehicle physics. Zero. Nada.This is especially evident in the circuit racing events where you'll be lucky to make it a hundred yards down the track before you're in the middle of an AI-created pileup. After extricating yourself, you'll soon discover that your high-performance vehicle is little more than a motorized pinball you're just hoping to nurse to the end. There's no discernable connection with the road (dirt or pavement) translatable to real world driving, so your only recourse is to boost ahead whenever prudent(strangely enough, boosts also help repair your damage) and try to manipulate your ride through the corners with unrealistic handbrake and throttle bursts. If you enjoy viewing replays, you're also out of luck -- there aren't any. I don't think Team 6 wants anyone studying its over-bloomed, rinky-dink graphics engine too closely.It gets worse in the demolition derby bits, Battle Arena and Big Battle. So much so that you'll probably want to squeeze these slipshod backdrops from your visual cortex with some full-on squints as you maneuver your minimally responsive pinball away from—and into—your opponents before they bash your health meter down to zero. The Monster Truck mode is equally unfulfilling, despite the addition of specific tasks and goals.The remaining disciplines are similarly flawed. The rag doll Stunt Man mode is more about ejecting from your car correctly than driving, Speed adds poorly rendered open-wheel racers to the mix, while Night Shift simply transplants the stock racing mode into a darkened, rain-swept racing environment (make that a pinball-bouncing environment) where lightning flashes can completely blind you to the road ahead. There is nothing to properly challenge you or sustain your interest here beyond each mode's opening event.Crappy graphics and MIA physics aren't the only non-contributors. Flatout 3's mindlessly aggressive AI reliably turns each event—even the speed contests—into annoying collision-fests where heavy metal machines bounce off of one another (often sailing skyward) as though filled with helium. There is no discernable strategy or tactics at play, just vehicle-on-vehicle magnetic attraction with the inevitable speed-retarding results. In one of the demolition derby events you can even make yourself invisible to the AI by driving around the outside of a grassy bowl while watching them demolish one another in the center.One area where the original Bugbear games excelled was damage modeling—both visually and in handling physics. Sadly, that feature hasn't migrated to the Team 6 sequel. Hanging bumpers, flipped-up hoods, and flapping doors provide visual cues that your ride is damaged, but the imagery is too cartoonish to take seriously, and there's no corresponding loss of on-track performance. There's also a silly non-interactive tuning option for some of the vehicles, promising performance boosts that never materialize. It's almost as if the game's producers compiled a specific feature list for the dev team to accomplish, but never followed up to see if they actually worked. "You put in a tuning option Peter? Excellent… move on!"An absentee QA department might also explain another of Flatout 3's technical hiccups -- specifically, an ongoing lock-up problem that can freeze the action for five or 10 seconds. It doesn't happen a lot, but it only takes a few occurrences to generate some choice invectives.You'll find no redemption in the multiplayer game either. Seven offensive driving disciplines (Challenge and Monster Truck from the single-player game aren't available) support between 12 and 24 players, but you'll need the patience of Job to witness it in action. Prayer may also help. I tried to find opponents -- even one -- every night for a week shortly after the Steam release, but came up empty. It seems no one is playing or buying Flatout 3.Not surprising. There isn't much to play or buy here. Between its obsolete visuals, dead vehicle dynamics, atrocious AI, and deserted multiplayer lobbies, Flatout 3 is a decided waste of time and space.What a wreck. I hear this Flatout was ported over from the Wii version, which is also terrible.