Cool new style of games
are not. Unfortunately, being the stubborn species that we are, most of us find much more enjoyment in things that are not safe. This causes a problem as some people want the enjoyment of more extreme things, yet do not want to be horribly disfigured and left in a hospital bed with the big Russian nurse that…touches things. Anyways! The point is that if you are one of these less-adventurous people you may now rejoice! You messiah (in videogame form) has arrived! You get the rush of doing tons of insanely extreme things, with all the broken bones of a trip to Sea-World (Note: to anyone that has broken a bone a Sea-World, fear not).
The basic premise is this; you are a stuntman…mind blowing eh? Anyways, you are a stuntman working on various movies, however you only do one movie at a time and between movies you take a trip to a stunt show, once you have completed all the stunts for your current movie you are shown a trailer for this movie which also incorporates the actual stunts you preformed along with some CG stuff that helps tell the story a bit more.
When looking at the visuals for this game you have to consider a few things, this includes the in-game graphics, the CG intros and trailers, and the replay graphics. For the in-game the graphics I had no major problems, the graphics weren’t exactly the best I’ve seen in most car games…but most car games don’t have an entire city full of cars, motorcycles and, in one case, a helicopter flying around, this
obviously takes a toll on the quality of the graphics and drops the
frame rate slightly, but its no less then what you would expect a game like this on PS2 to look like. The CG intros and trailers looked pretty good, I mean it wasn’t exactly the greatest quality, but there is so much of it and some of the actual video is really really cool, especially from the trailers of some of the movies. Finally we have the replay visuals, much like the Gran Turismo series, the graphics in the replay mode seem to shine above the in-game ones. I’m not saying Stuntman and Gran Turismo are on equal terms from a graphical standpoint, only that they share that one similarity. To be honest, watching replays of your in-game shenanigans is actually one of the best parts of the game, and the dynamic camera work is a major reason for that.
On the Gameplay side of things this game is pretty solid but does have one major flaw. That flaw is the fact that this game can be so
frustrating that it can actually cause you to become the Hulk, even if
your name isn’t Dr. Banner, (I have pictures to prove it). In all honesty though, this game is enjoyable but sometimes you will be in a chase seen and tap a wall and then you will drop too far behind and the director will tell you to do it all over again. I discovered two major ways to help with this rage, one is to play with a friend, this makes it easier as you aren’t always the one doing the swearing but listening to it and you can try to calm each other down and root one another on (I know it sounds like a bit much…but trust me). The other way is not as…graceful…it involves attempting to kill the director or camera crew that is usually standing next to you at the start of the level, it sounds brutish, but it does help ease off some of that rage. In case you are wondering, the gameplay consists of the director yelling “Action” and then you just go, he will tell you what to do (for example: “Turn left”, “Go down the alley”, “knock over the barrels”, etc.) and there are also arrows and various symbols to help you out as well. It should be noted however, that Stuntman may also be one of the most rewarding games I have played in years. There is something so beautiful about finally completing that jump that you tried so hard to make, or finally beating the train instead of the train beating you, and also watching your replays is incredibly rewarding (even if you fail the mission, they are still great to watch). Also, watching a trailer for a movie (and all of the movies sound great by the way, it makes me wish they were real movies) and seeing stunts that you actually performed is just plain amazing.
Control is a tricky thing to rate to be honest. I didn’t have any
problem with the control of most of the vehicles but there were some (notably the three wheeled Tuk-Tuk) that would tip over if you hit a bump in the road, and don’t even think about doing a 180° emergency break in one of those things. For the most part though there were no real problems, nothing spectacular, but nothing to complain about either.
Sound was also very well done. The cars or snowmobiles or whatever you were driving always sounded accurate, and so did any explosion or giant crashes. The music for the game was actually very in the background to the point where you didn’t really notice it most of the time, that might have something to do with the incredible amount of swearing you were doing at the time though. As a side note, I would just like to point out that I didn’t think I would even remotely enjoy and country style music but, after being stuck for several hours in the more “Dukes of Hazzards” level, I started to enjoy the music a little bit…perhaps I was just trying to take my mind off the aneurism I was about to have, I’m not really sure.
Something else that is a great thing about this game is the replay value. The fact that you can unlock different vehicles and ramps and things of destruction during each movie to use in your own Stunt Arena is one reason that the replay value is so high. Not too many other games allow you to create your own arena of doom and then try to destroy your vehicle or you can complete the stunt unharmed (but where’s the fun in that?). You can unlock such crazy things as loops, corkscrew jumps, flaming hoops, and cars and buses and trucks, oh my! There really is a lot on the replay side of things, one thing that is a lot of fun is trying to create a really hard stunt for someone to attempt to complete and making them use a tuk-tuk or some piece of crap car.
As you can probably tell this game had quite a bit of impact on me. I enjoyed the majority of the time I was playing it, the rest of the time was spent swearing and destroying anonymous camera crews. Overall this game is very unique and I recommend that you at least rent it and give it a shot if you own a PS2, I doubt you would regret buying this game either.