Still, whatever you might say about nu metal, there’s something fairly irresistible about the combination of a heavily guitar-based pop song and lyrics that are basically about telling everyone to fuck off. “Not Listening” is a very Papa Roach song title, with previous hits being based on the themes of “I hate myself” (Last Resort), “I hate capitalism” (Between Angels and Insects), and “my girlfriend hates me” (She Loves Me Not). It appears that the main criteria for selection on this soundtrack are the presence of crunchy guitar riffs that make an appropriate background accompaniment to fake cars smashing into things repeatedly, and whatever you might think about the featured artists here (and some of them certainly have been on the receiving end of some strong opinions over the years), the songs do marry up with the action quite well.īy happy coincidence, despite remaining moderately hopeless in 2006 when it came to keeping up with music trends (although around this time my friend PG and I were embarking on an ill-advised and short-lived musical collaboration, to which I contributed unintentionally awful lyrics and vocals and a solitary keyboard loop, and he did the guitars, drum programming and, well, everything else) the artists here were relatively well-known to me even before being forced to listen to their music across 25 or so hours of lap-based racing. The original, while fun, had a distinct ‘PC game from the early 00s’ vibe, while this sequel amped up the presentation as well as the excitement, with the addition of the by-now obligatory soundtrack of songs by real-life bands to make sure it kept up with the flashy console racers of the day. This time we’re taking a look at FlatOut 2, an absolute beauty of an arcade racer that was perhaps a little overlooked at the time, with some reviewers placing undue emphasis on the slightly tasteless driver-through-the-windscreen mechanic and associated sub-games over the core racing, which was (and remains) thrilling stuff.
There’s an overview and introduction to the series here if you want to know a little more.
So far I’ve covered a couple of EA games – FIFA 2000 and Need for Speed: Underground, while Stoo added a touch of class to what was becoming a dangerously flippant series with a look at the music of Homeworld. Soundtracks is where we take a look back at the use of licensed music in games.