Title Stuntman: Ignition Date 09.08.2007 Genre Action, Driving Platform Xbox 360 Developer 2K Boston, 2K Australia Publisher THQ

The original Stuntman for the PS2 was one of the most unnecessarily frustrating games of last-gen. Regardless; it developed a loyal fan base that enjoyed the challenge. Now a different developer and publisher have decided to make a long overdue sequel, in an attempt to fix the problems of the first.

For those unfamiliar with the franchise, Stuntman is a driving game where you must perform insane, multi-part stunts for various movies. The scenes you must perform require you to drift through certain corners, cleanly pass through narrow gaps, jump over certain objects, and other tasks. The most notable difference between this and the original is that rather than having entire runs consist of exactly what the director wants, there is now a scoring system where you earn points for doing stunts of your own in quick succession in between the required director stunts. To get a perfect score you must do the entire scene in one string, meaning you have to be constantly scoring near misses or jumps to keep your string going. This leads to about as much trial and error as the first game, but now there is no longer a loading screen when you retry, making it much easier to tolerate. You don't even have to hit all the director stunts; you're generally allowed 5 strikes before a re-shoot, though if you want the replay to look its best, you probably shouldn't mess any up. The physics are also much more arcade-ish and forgiving than the first game, but they still require skill.

The scenes you do are intense and varied. The level of chaos around you in most scenes is amazing, as being within a movie, everything is scripted. Cars explode and collide all around you while you get to dodge them in flashy ways. As for variety, it is surprisingly abundant. Some scenes use cars, some use motorcycles, and there's even the occasional hovercraft, monster truck, or semi to have fun with. Most movies are shot in cities, but one is shot in a desert, and another has you driving on snow and ice. In addition to movies, you can also work on commercials or stunt shows.

In addition to career mode, the game also offers some "quick fix" scenes for pick up and play enjoyment, as well as a mode that requires you to place all the ramps and obstacles yourself to reach the required director stunts.

You can also create your own stunt setups without having to reach any goals, but that ability fails to live up to its true potential for several reasons. First, the memory limit only allows you to create about 30 second runs, while some single player levels last over a minute. Also, the stagnant ramp setups you create are completely dull compared to anything else in the game. Sure there are plenty of destructible objects and explosives to place, but it’s still quite bland. They tried to include some dynamic objects, like cars that drive forward when you enter a box near them, but the delay between entering the box and the car getting up to speed makes them pretty useless. The method of sharing online is a joke, and gets my nomination for "worst idea in a game this year." Basically, only the top 10 monthly and all time arenas for each of the 3 environments are posted, which would be bad enough even if these arenas were any good. However, the method of determining the top 10 is simply how high a score you can get in 30 seconds with the arena, rather than how fun it is. This means the only arenas available to download consist of long lines of objects to drive back and forth between for 30 seconds.

Now let’s talk about graphics. They're really nothing spectacular, since this game was also developed for the PS2. However, that doesn't make the graphics bad, as they've been polished heavily for the next-gen version. The graphics are smooth, but not particularly detailed. The frame-rate even drops when there's too many explosions going on at once (though "too many" is high enough that its a rare occurrence.) Overall this is just an average-looking next-gen game.

And the audio? Good in some areas, not-so-good in others. Explosions, collisions, and engine noises all sound fine, although sometimes they glitch and can't be heard in multiplayer or stunt constructor. Fortunately this isn't too common. The stunt coordinator who gives you instructions throughout the scenes is a little annoying, but the directors who talk to you before and after scenes vary from movie to movie, and each have some funny lines. The original music found in career mode is great as far as completely generic music goes. Unfortunately, the licensed music found in multiplayer and quick fix is pretty bad. I only found one song that I actually enjoyed, and the rest ranged from tolerable, to bad, to so-bad-it's-actually-good.

Now I know a lot of you just couldn't wait any longer to hear about the multiplayer, so I'll stop stalling already and cover it. The game features online (up to 8 players) and offline (up to 4 players at once) multiplayer with 3 different modes, and 3 car classes to chose from. The primary mode is called Backlot Battle, where you race through the studios with the sets of 4 of the movies from career mode (A forward and reverse track for each set.), trying to get the highest stunt score. You earn points the same way as in single player, and even have to do director stunts. The catch? You can steal your opponents strings by ramming them, leading to the tough decision of letting your string end so it can be banked, or keeping it going to increase the multiplayer but, risk losing it all. It is quite a blast to play.

The only problem is that lag can lead to spotty collision detection, making the string stealing a bit of a crapshoot, but fortunately lag isn't as common as in some games. Backlot Race uses the same tracks, but instead of score, all that matters is crossing the finish line first. Finally there's movie challenge, where players compete for the highest score in the single player levels. Up to 6 players can play hotseat offline, and online allows simultaneous competition, where other players appear as ghosts who don't affect you. It’s also worth noting that cars can be painted any color you want, and no one car dominates its class, making it often easy to tell your opponents apart without memorizing their gamertags. The only major drawback of online is that the community is relatively small, with only 5-10 ranked matches going at a time, and only slightly more player matches.

This game will take at least 10-12 hours to get 100% completion of single player, and thanks to multiplayer, stunt constructor, and even just the ability to go back and try to beat your old scores this game offers plenty of replayability. It is definitely a good value.

If you like driving games, and don't mind a little trial and error, this is an excellent game that you should not overlook. If you hate driving games and/or trial and error, those are about the only excuses to pass on this game.

Game Score

B-

Reviewed By: Contributed