Ever go to a movie and be blown away by the amount of action in the game, but the story sucked so bad you wanted to stab your fellow movie goers? Well….Stuntman is kind of like that, except replace the story with design and the movie goers with the controller in your hand, which may or not hit somebody else in the room.
The premise of the game is unique, but is what ultimately the downfall. It is your job, as a stuntman fresh out of driving school, to perform massive stunts using precision driving. The stunts range from jumping freeway gap to speeding into oncoming traffic, and it might be fun to explore a stage and find the most exciting tricks to pull off, you must adhere strictly to the director’s instructions. This is where the games greatest downfall is. Driving games, for the most part, allow for a lot of freedom. You can choose your vehicle, the stage, how and where you drive, and sometimes even the configuration of various engine components. Stuntman has you stuck in a prescribed car (all of which feel a little too similar) going over the same route over and over again, until you perfect it. I thought it might be cool to be able to do all these stunt on you home console, but really it isn’t much fun at all, and the only thing cool about it is the fact that real stuntmen have to do the tricks in one take, or they wind up in a hospital bed for a while or, worse, in a coffin. It just does not translate well into a game.
There is little available to prepare you for the level of memorization necessary to complete a stunt either. While it would be much appreciated to be given a layout of the stage and where key events are, or just a simple drawing board of the action, all that is given is a few second cutscene of the stuntman hinting at what the big finally for the game will be. Warnings are given beforehand of what your next act will be, but the director does not yell them out quick enough, so sometimes I was past the turn before I realized what he had told me to do. And symbols, such as those telling you to pass a car, are helpful, but when you cannot see them until you right up to the area they leave you little time to allow you to take action. Alternative routes and opportunities for stunt are present throughout many of the stages, but when you are forced to restart for just facing the wrong directions, I never felt the need to find these for some worthless bonus points.
In the end you are simply forced to memorize every single part of the stage with exact precision. While this is expectable for mastering some games, such as a shooter, in a driving game this level of intensity just to pass a stage is just crazy. After playing this for the first day I was unapproachable the rest of the night. I am pretty sure I could have presented the game in court and got off if I happened to kill a man that evening. The only good thing that does come out of this difficult task is the rewarding feeling you get after finally finishing a movie and getting to watch your cool stunts play out before you cut into a movie trailer. But, this reward is one more of relief then accomplishment for completing something that took a lot of hard work.
The visuals and audio are best described as average. Neither does anything to detract from the overall value of the game, nor do they really do anything to add to it or make it stand out. The sound effects in the game are a total mixed bag. The vehicles sound nice, full of bass that allows you to imagine their power, but just about everything else is bland. The crowd cheering sounds too much like Madden 95 for the Genesis, and the only thing that could make repeating a stage over fifty times worse is the sometimes too feminine director barking out order after order to you. The music is decent, with a different score fitting to each movie. Some are better then others, but they always fit with what is going on in the scene and movie. The graphics are pretty simple, but filled with detail. The major complaint about the visuals are that they just look lazy. They do nothing to push the PS2 to what it is capable of, instead just doing enough so the game looks presentable. But at least you never suffer slowdown and things remain running smoothly at all times.
Where this game truly stands out is in its presentation. This is where the “cool” aspect of the movie comes in. The game is present in series of movies, each one being a thinly veiled rip-off of other movies or shows that showcase stunts. These range from British Gangster movies (ala Guy Ritchie) to The Dukes of Hazard. Each movie is broken down into a few long scenes where you have to perform a huge stretch of stunts, much more then any stuntman would be willing to do. Your reward for this is the trailer from the movie featuring YOUR STUNTS! Intercut with the decent CG movie cuts are your actual stunts, looking much better then they did when you actually performed them. Sometimes you can do miserable on a stunt, totally missing what they needed you to do, and with the help of a little movie magic (good angles and such) the stunt looks fantastic in the movie. All of this is fun to watch, so if you have a sap of a friend who is good at video games make him do the hard labor and you can go in to watch the culmination of his hard work.
The final note on this game is the shining star in the game. THE STUNT ARENA!! ( SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! sunday!..... ). With each scene completed in the career mode you open toys for the stunt arena. Sometimes you will get some cars, other times it is ramps and other cool gadgets to put in the arena. The stunt arena allows you to set up these toys in any manner you can pretty much imagine to perform a stunt from your movie or one made up completely in your head. The toys are really cool, also. You can get car launchers that shoot vehicles at high speeds for you to crash in, and jumps that will have you sailing across the arena. Eventually, or unfortunately, the only reason you keep going back to the career mode will be to open more toys for you to play with in the arena. The setup for the stadium could be a little simpler, and I would like to be able to place more toys into each trick, but this are only minor annoyances for the enjoyment that can be had with this part.
It is hard to come to any conclusion about Stuntman. I could not recommend you, or anybody else, to purchase it. While the artificial replay through the tedious stunts and the real replay via the Arena mode will keep you playing for a while, it is not anything that you cannot get done in a simple rental period. Not to mention after about a week you will be so pissed at the game you will never want to play it again. Just rent it, beat it, and send it away and be happy that you survived, let alone beat it (if ya can….).
I personally think Stuntman is amongst the best games PS2 has to offer. If you can look past the flaws, you'll find one hell of a game, but if long load times and repetion aren't your thing, then don't bother.
your mom
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