Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver

"A slightly dumb-downed Stuntdriver."

Girls are beginning to rule the roost now. With Lara breaking the way for lead female characters into the world of video games, but there's one woman who'd prefer to making her own entrance, even if she needs to smash her way through...

Chase Corrada...dazzling...foxy...sexy...and dangerous. She's destined and determined to make her mark on the stunt-driving world, beating all the male daredevils to fame. Chase gets her break when Mr. Chin, highly acclaimed movie director, hires her out to star in four of his latest block busters. Sounds cool, huh? Read on.

Well, aside from the premise of the game, it's let down. It's hardly polished and it does make you feel like you're playing a game that belonged in the closing era of the PSX. There's hardly a difference in performance rates between the vehicles you drive...their handling feels clunky and cumbersome, be it a Noodle Tuk-Tuk van or a top-of-the-line Porsche. But if you look past the graphics and at the core gameplay, you have to commend the boys down at Bam! Entertainment for their somewhat creative game. Simple objectives such as racing out of a military base, through the gates of an airbase and driving up the ramp to a taxi-ing plane is something special. On top of these objectives are bonus objectives, such as you doing several backflips or collecting all of the hidden clapper boards through the scenes. It does add to the replay value, but how hard is it to a couple of back flips? Incredibly easy. Too easy, in fact.

Some levels are refreshing and fun to play again and again, but some are butt-clenchingly tedious (one such level had me repeating it more than 60 times before completion) and unforgiving. There's a very nice replay feature which allows you to create chase movies, but it's only for the Story mode, so there won't be no Take-A-Ride mode ala Driv3r where you can tear up the streets how you want.

Chase is sadly left alone. Nobody picks it up. The developers too ashamed to breathe life back into it. If Chase was given more time to be developed and perfected and made into a game where the ideas behind it were backed up with graphical strength and smart AI, we might have a successful game series on our hands, but that's not the case. And it's not just the lack of polishing, it's the lack of time. The game is made of 4 movies, with 4 scenes in each, totaling 16 levels to play through. Not that many, and will only last a few hours before it's completed start-to-finish.

Good game, poor execution.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 10/10/05