14 out of 14 people found this review helpful.
'Stuntman' or 'A good idea gone bad'
Date of Review: Jul 3, 2002
The Bottom Line: Fun, but not for long. Career mode is too annoying, but stunt arena is lots of fun. Try renting it first, you may like it.
Making a game about performing insane stunts is a novel idea. However, making a GOOD game about performing insane stunts is a difficult thing to do. Unfortunately, Infogrames did not succeed in this venture, but they got pretty close.
Stuntman lets you take the role of a stunt driver who is seemingly a stunt newbie. The driver starts on a low budget flick and then works his way up to bigger Hollywood type films. As you progress, you unlock extra cars and track pieces (for constructing your own course -- more on this later). There are several movies, and about 5-6 stunts for each one.
Gameplay:
Career mode is the bread and butter of this game. Work your way up the ranks. Harder stunts, more money, new cars. Sounds pretty typical of any driving game, be it GTA 3 or GT 3.
There are some really fundamental flaws with the gameplay which makes it an annoying and frustrating experience. First off, you receive almost no instruction on how you're supposed to do the stunt. You get something like "This is the scene where I have to meet the guy at the docks!", but since this game is so particular about how you perform the stunts, this isn't nearly enough. With most of the later stunts, it will take at least half a dozen times before you can even figure out the correct path to take.
The second thing is that some of the stunt 'triggers' don't pick up when you DO perform part of a stunt correctly. For instance, when doing a 180 degree turn using the emergency break in a specific box, sometimes the game will decide that you didn't complete it properly. This would be fine and good, except that to count off for this and not for say, stopping the car in the middle of nowhere (which you can do, if you have enough extra time), is ludicrous.
Third off, this game really isn't indicative of what a stuntman would be required to do. Several minute long scenes with no cuts? Fail any part and have to do it over again? Yeah right. It's extremely annoying to be a couple of minutes into a stunt just to screw it up. Yeah, this leads to more time you have (not want) to spend playing the game, but it's tantamount to what the old arcade owners would do -- making the joysticks harder to move so that people couldn't do as well in the games. For shame.
By the time I got to the third stunt on the first movie I was already getting annoyed with how easy it is to screw up. Yeah, in real life stunts have to be perfect, but I'd sacrifice some of the realism for a little more fun. For those who have played Gran Turismo (any of them), some of these stunts make the license tests look like child's play.
Lastly, while load time isn't necessarily an element of gameplay, it sure takes away from the time you play the game. This is the slowest loading game I've ever seen. Before every scene you get a little intro movie, which takes about 30 seconds to load. Then, after that you have to wait 15 seconds for the stunt to start. Every time you don't complete a stunt properly, you have to sit through the same 15 second wait again. How utterly annoying. To spend more than 10% of your time just staring at a 'loading' screen is inexcusable.
For all that Stuntman does wrong, it does do something right. It gives you a huge arena, a garage full of cars, and the ability to put together a stunt course that Evel Knievel would be proud of. As you complete the stunts in the career mode, depending on how well you do, you'll unlock different things for the arena mode. A couple dozen vehicles and tons of ramps let you have lots of fun. You can, of course, save your arenas. You will enjoy watching the wheels pop off your car, although once you lose two of them, you can't control it anymore and have to just ram your car into the wall to get it to blow up.
The graphics are pretty good, although nothing too special. The scenery is wonderful, although this is to be expected since you ARE on a movie set. The introductory scenes and movies are good. There are also extras on the game -- something you'd usually only find on a DVD movie. Documentaries, trailers, etc. All of this just adds to the quality of the game.
Sound & Music:
The sounds are great. The squeal of the tires, the revving of the engine, and the crash when you hit other cars are all very realistic. The voice acting is also done well, although you'll learn to HATE the voice of the director as he screams out "Where are you going?" or "Cut!". By the way, why does the same director do all the movies? Is he, perhaps, riding on the coattails of the amazing stuntman, namely you? One can only hope.
The music is nothing impressive at the beginning, but at least it's not annoying like Gran Turismo 3 (sorry, there's only so much Lenny Kravitz I can take). As the movies get better and the stunts get harder, the music DOES get better. There's some James Bond and Indiana Jones type music, which is entertaining.
Summary:
If you think you will enjoy a strict stunt simulator, this game is for you. It's fun to play in groups, laughing at someones mistakes or applauding their well done stunts. Personally, I just wish it was a little more fun, and I wish the load times were cut in half. Perhaps then I would recommend it.
