Stuntman

"First you praise the concept, then you snap the disc into little tiny pieces"

Stuntman has a novel concept, you, as a professional Hollywood stuntman, must work your way up from straight to video releases to box office smashes. Over the course of six movies, you will take place in chases, both as the chaser and the chasee, do crazy jumps and smash into anything in site.
We'll cover 4 main areas of the game: gameplay, graphics, replay, and frustration level.

Gameplay: Stuntman, if you didn't know already, is a driving game from Reflections, best known for Driver, so, naturally, some gameplay concepts have rubbed off here. Most notably, the handling. Anyone familiar with either of the Driver games should be able to adapt quickly. Also in the games favor is a simple control scheme. X is go, circle is brake, and triangle and square are both hand brake. R1 is a horn, and the two lower shoulder look left and right. The coolest button, by far, is L1. It controls your cars action, whatever it may be. It can be used to set off a car rocking explosion, or shoot a pole downward from your car to roll it. In the game, you have to follow the directors directions to pull off the stunt. Most are fairly simple, like ''overtake the car'' or ''get close to the explosion'' to side swiping semis and making death defying jumps. Of course, if you don't follow his instructions, he won't hesitate to yell CUT and make you do it again, but more on that later.

Graphics: Most of the game looks fine, but of course, it's no GT3. The cars come off as really jagged, and it makes them look funny, but the backgrounds are really cool. There are tons of things to smash into, and they all fly around realistically. There is traffic everywhere, and lots of people dive out of the way when you drive by. Snow and dirt fly up in realistic fashion. The only thing that looks truly horrible in Stuntman is the in-car view. It looks, honestly, like a Playstation game, but that's really my only huge gripe about the graphics.

Replay: You're going to have to replay levels over and over again if you can't get them right the first time, and most of the time, you won't. But when you do, you feel so triumphant that you beat the level, it won't matter that you had to play it 37 times before you got it right. And after that, you may not feel like ever doing it again. Luckily, here is also the Stunt Constructor mode, where you can take the cars and and stunt pieces earned in the career mode and create your own stunt, using crazy things like car launchers and ramps the explode when you drive up them. With tons of pieces and 36 different cars the possibilities in the Stunt Creator are nearly endless.

Frustration Level: This is big. Like I said earlier, if it takes you 37 tries to beat a level, then when you do beat it there is a moment of great pride, which is great and all, but by the tenth try, you'll be ready chuck the controller through the television and tell the director to shove it up his @$$.

Bottom Line: If you can take the unbelievable difficulty, then by all means, go and by Stuntman, but for the weak of heart, a rental is in order. Some will find it strangely addicting, but most will probably become discouraged when the can't finish the second stunt.

Final Score: 7 out of 10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/02, Updated 06/26/02