Stuntman

"A Unique, Yet Frustrating Game"

What Type Of Game Is This?
In Stuntman, you're pretty much the stunt double for the actors in 6 different movies. Although all of the stunts you do are in a car. You start off in a small time movie, doing small stunts in a car. Eventually you work your way up to doing big car stunts in big Hollywood movies.

Gameplay - 7
As you slowly ease into the world of car stunts, you are required to do a few things in a scene to make it complete. For example, you may have to drive forward, make a 180 turn, jump off a ledge and land on your wheels. All these different little stunts is told to you by a small yellow colored graphic image. Pretty cheap if you ask me....some of the images look like no time was spent making them. A image that tells you to jump over something is signaled by a arrow going over a jump. A minor complaint, but it's noticeable enough to complain about.
Also, to keep the game harder, you must do all the designated stunts in a time limit. To gain more time, you need to do everything faster, so you can go through the checkpoints and gain more time.
Let's do a little walkthrough of what happens in Suntman...
You get to the starting point, and see the countdown until you start. It hits zero and you blindly drive forward waiting for an annoying voice actor to scream out instructions to you. You drive straight until you're about a half second away from hitting some boxes. The ''director'' screams out Hit The Boxes! You do so, and a small green section on the top of the screen goes into a line. This tells you how much you've done of the stunt and if you did it right/wrong. You drive for another two seconds, almost into a wall, and the director screams out Turn Left! Too late. You already hit the wall. Of course, it's your fault right? The game relies on you being able to have quick reactions to what the director yells out. If not, you fail the stunt and have to start over.
It's a terrible idea, because it relies on you memorizing what to do in the stunt. The director doesn't help at all, so you're trying as hard as you can to see the tiny little yellow images, telling you what to do next. If you fail to find one, or turn the wrong way, you fail. It's an awful system because after a while you'll get sick of trying to memorize the course. A great feature that they should have added was a walkthrough, of what you need to do, before you ever do the stunt.
The cars in Stuntman are no help to the terrible system Atari and Infogrames have setup for you already. A normal car handles more like a garbagetruck than a car. It takes a lot of getting used to. There are also little 3-wheeled cars called Tuk-Tuks which handle like a 7 year old trying to ride a real bike for the first time. The thing tips over more than a drunk who's had too much to drink. It's fine the first few times, but Stuntman makes you do the same stunt about 30 times before you get it perfect. Trust me, this will get on your last nerve.

Graphics - 8
A good point in the game are these graphics. You'll go through many different environments (6 movies) so you'll go from a dirt road to inside of an office building. If you've ever played Driver 2 for the PlayStation, the graphics look almost identical.
Something that Stuntman takes pride in is it's collition detection. When you hit a car, it'll dent.....perfectly. The windows smash, the doors rip off, it's really a great sight.

Modes -8
Aside from the car wreck of the Stunt Career, Stuntman offers a few good modes of play. They have the career mode, stunt coordinator, and some behind the scenes movies.
I've already explained about the Stunt Career in the Gameplay paragraph. If you've managed to give up on, or complete Stunt Career without destroying your PS2, Stuntman, or whatever is lying around, you are rewarded with a mode that lets you set up your own stunts.
It's set in an arena (only one arena to choose from) and you have different options to pick from. You can set out cars, jumps, and many more things, and smash, jump, and crash your way through them. The farther you get in Stunt Career, the more Toys you get to choose from. Personally, I'd rather get a root canal than try to complete Stunt Career, I just used a code to get all the toys.
The only bad parts of this mode is that you have a limit of how many things you can put out. Also, your car wrecks fast so you'll have to restart many times.
Behind The Scenes mode has several movies, ranging from a few trailers of games, to a closer look at Stuntman. A great addition in my opinion.

Cars - 9
There's a huge selection of cars in Stuntman. There's about 40 after you unlock all of them. Again, a code can be used so you won't suffer through Stunt Career. Some things you can do to pass the time in Stuntman, are, take a monster truck (Yes! A monster truck!) and line up some cars, and smash your way around the Stunt Coordinator. Or you could choose a race car and see how fast you can get it, racing around a track. Overall, there's an insane amount of cars you can choose from.

Difficulty - 9
As I've said, this game is much too hard to complete. You need to memorize stunts to even have a chance at completing the level. Aside from that, the difficulty is insane! It's very frusterating when you're driving down a road and clip a car, barley touching it, and you spin out of control, and flip your car. I'm not even exagerating this. It's actually happened, many times. The physics in Stuntman are awful because as soon as you touch something, you flip out of control.

Audio - 6
The director's voice really brings down the score in this category. It's extremely annoying listening to him scream out commands, or constantly telling you that you've failed. You can't change the voice either, and there's no possible way to mute it without memorizing the course first. Simply a terrible feature in Stuntman.
The music however, is not very noticeable, but it's average. It's pretty much a good break from the directory. Then again, so is silence...silence you get from smashing your PS2 into pieces after this game drives you insane.

Replay Value - 7
After you get about halfway through Stunt Career, you'll probably quit it and never come back. I congratulate those who have struggled through the awful feature. For the rest of us, we can build our own stunts and choose from many cars to do crazy stunts. If you've gotten sick of building your own stunt, the game is pretty much dead. Since building your own stunt is the only way to keep the excitment in this game alive, after you've gotten sick of that, you won't ever want to see the word Stuntman again.

Loading
This seems to be a big complaint for a lot of people. Let's clear this one up. When loading a new movie, the loading is about 20 seconds, or maybe a little less. Since getting through a movie is very hard, you shouldn't be upset with this. After you fail a stunt (and you will, many times) the loading to restart it is 7 seconds, not terrible, but could use improvement.
Don't believe the rumors that this game is all loading, and that's what kills it. What kills this game is terrible execution of a great idea, not loading.

Pros
- Lots Of Cars
- Stunt Constructor
- Looks Great When Smashing A Car
- A Terrific Idea For A Game

Cons
- Poor Collition Detection
- Bad Sound
- Way Too Hard
- Makes You Memorize Course
- Not Clear On What To Do On A Lot Of Stunts

Buy/Rent?
Rent! Rent! Rent! This game should run it's course with you in a simple rent. For the sake of......for the sake of your wallet and it's contents, rent! Rent this game, a please don't break it out of frusteration, that makes companies mad.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/01/02, Updated 09/01/02