Jackass: The Game Hands-On

After three seasons, two motion pictures, and countless blows to the groin, MTV's Jackass is finally coming to video game consoles--namely the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable--with a new title that will let you act out a series of stunts just as brutal as those you've seen on TV. The story goes that director Jeff Tremaine was injured in a prank right before shooting on the new season was set to begin, so you'll have to come in and pick up directing duties to complete the seven episodes of the new season. That means you'll be happily abusing series mainstays like Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and Wee Man to your heart's content through the 35 stunts that make up the seven virtual episodes contained here.

Each episode will have five stunts, and we got to see a handful of them. In San Fran Trash Can, you'll load your favorite jackass into a trash can and send him careening down the hills of San Francisco, with you guiding the trash can between--or into--various cars, pedestrians, and obstacles as you try to reach the finish line. Suburban Catapult had us loading a cast member into a giant slingshot strung between two trees and launching them across a quiet neighborhood and nearby construction site, just to see how much distance we could get with our human projectile. Golf Rally was all about jumping into a motorized cart and terrorizing a golf course, knocking down attendants and destroying the scenery as much as possible.

Basically, this is exactly the kind of stuff you'd expect to see in the show (though none of the show's specific stunts have been re-created here). A few of the stunts will fall into the "Wee Man games" category, and these naturally focus on Jackass's diminutive character of the same name. These will be simpler games than the primary stunts, and will involve things like Wee Man shooting a paintball gun at Johnny Knoxville, who's being rotated on a circular board by Chris Pontius. Of course, you can blast Pontius too, if you feel like it; this is just that kind of game.

The PS2's and PSP's scoring systems each work a little differently. On the PS2, you're trying to rack up a set amount of money (usually $500,000) by causing damage before you can move on to the next event. On the PSP, you're striving for a best-of-five-stars rating. In both cases, though, you'll have a list of specific objectives to meet that will net you big bonus points. In San Fran Trash Can, sample objectives included rolling safely under three trucks, finishing the plummet without hitting anything, or hitting a fire hydrant on the way down. Suburban Catapult tasked us with landing in a particular swimming pool, smashing through a glass house, or skidding more than 30 feet after initially hitting the ground (you wouldn't believe the rug burns). Some stunts will even let you bail out of your vehicle early, at which point you'll see every laceration and broken bone called out onscreen, along with the extra points you're getting for all that pain.

The Jackass games will contain a good amount of extra content outside the main stunt mode. Since this game is based on a TV show, television-style replays are prominent. The director's mode will let you control the camera angles and other such production elements on your replay, and the PSP game will even let you upload your best replays or download other players' own stunts for greater comedic effect. There's a challenge mode that makes the stunts harder. The Jackass Mart lets you buy all kinds of crazy props to use in your stunts, not to mention new characters and costumes (such as Ryan Dunn's sewer costume and Pontius' Party Boy getup), plus galleries and movie clips from the series. Finally, there's a multiplayer mode, such as a four-player round-robin tournament to see who can get the highest score in a particular stunt, and the aptly named "ass-to-ass" two-player cooperative mode that lets you play a handful of the stunts in split-screen mode.

It seems as though Red Mile and MTV are putting a lot of effort into this one; all of the Jackass cast members have contributed their own voice acting, and motion capture was handled at Weta Digital, of Lord of the Rings fame. (Don't expect this one to win any Oscars, though.) Both versions of Jackass are scheduled to hit store shelves on September 25.