Is THQ's Burnout wannabe all-action or a short series of damp squibs?
At least, that's the only way we can explain that irrational desire, as being a stuntman is the worst job in Hollywood. You spend a large portion of your life injured, no one is ever allowed to see your face and most people treat you like a heavily-insured psychopath, which is probably what you are.
Ignition's game illustrates that lifestyle exactly. You take the part of a poor Joe who has to get in a vehicle and hurl it through explosions whilst being filmed. You're expendable, as are any camera crew that get in your way, though you can retry scenes as often as you like. As you improve, your reputation goes up and you get access to more of the handful movies that you can act in.
Typically, the game is paced so that you'll unlock the next movie once you've completed the previous one on three stars.
The genres vary from disaster movies to action movies to redneck chase movies - unsurprisingly there isn't a period romance amongst them. Meanwhile, the range of movie-specific vehicles is great and they all handle pretty differently, if a bit loosely. You can drive a range of off-roaders, familiar favourite on-road vehicles, dirt-bikes and even a truck dragging a Scud missile!
The nearest title to it on Xbox 360 is Burnout: Revenge. Like that game, Stuntman
is all about the cool explosions and ridiculous driving. Unlike that game, there's more complicated aspects too, specifically the stunts themselves.
There are two types: director stunts and homebrew ones. As you drive around you can knock into barrels, slide past/under/over obstacles, trigger explosions and weapons fire and do jumps.
The director stunts are of very specific types and if you miss more than a set number on a set, you fail and have to restart (thankfully, restarting is practically instantaneous). You also have to restart if you run out of time, if you fall out of shot or into a hazard, and, sometimes, you restart just because the developers feel like it.
Irritants include the lack of reliability of the game. Often you fail a set and it's no fault of yours - indeed, the first time you play it, there is no way you can perfect it. Stunt icons appear too late for you to react or appear in places that would only be accessible if you'd taken a different route a split-second before.
Stuntman is addictive, quirky and occasionally funny. However, the game is somewhat limited graphically by being
co-developed (PS2) for an older platform, and it's also much shorter than its competitor, Burnout, although the stunt-creator and multiplayer do help to extend its life.