Developer: Reflections Interactive
Publisher: Infogrames
Platform: Playstation 2
ESRB Rating: T (Mild language, violence)

In Stuntman, you're placed behind the wheel of a wide variety of vehicles in order to create some of that old movie magic. As a professional stunt driver, you work your way up from cheezy 70's Smokey and the Bandit-type movies to top-notch international spy thrillers full of exotic European sports cars. But the stunt driver's life is not an easy one, and this game serves to simulate not only the thrill of jumping through moving trains, but also the endless frustration caused by film's demand on precision.

Stuntman presents three potential gameplay modes: Career, Stunt Constructor, and Driving Tests. The Career mode, however, is the dominant mode of the game, and through it, players can unlock the potential of the Stunt Constructor and Test sections of the game. In Career mode, you play the role of an up-and-coming stunt driver, working on his first big picture. You are presented with a driving sequence that involves 15-25 stunts (a stunt being any individual instruction provided by the director, such as "pass that car" or "smash through those crates"), and if you successfully complete the run (typically by completing 80-85% of all the stunts without destroying the car), you get cash. The cash essentially means nothing, except that it unlocks components for the stunt arena (more on that later). Once a film is finished, consisting of three to five driving sequences, a trailer is released for the film, and you set off to the next location for more shooting on your next picture.

The basic premise of the game is dirt-simple: follow the instructions provided by the director, and keep the car in one piece. In practice, however, things are nowhere near that simple. The game demands extremely precise driving, as you are constantly placed against a clock to judge your success. Slip up and clip the corner of a building and you're probably going to have to start the run over again. This leads to some seriously frustrating play from time to time. A few of the sequences even very early on in the game are insanely difficult and demanding, and the game then boils down to a long night of trial-and-error, each attempt making tiny little adjustments to a run to get it perfect. It's not a game that can be successfully completed by someone relying solely on good reflexes and hand-eye coordination. You've got to screw up enough times to see what the level *wants* you to do, even if it's not the only conceivable way to have done it.

Frustrations of the Career mode aside, the Stunt Construction portion of the game is a blast. As you earn money in Career mode, you gain access to a wide variety of "toys" for use in the Stunt Arena (basically a big oval track with lots of empty space in the middle). These toys include ramps of every shape and size, barrels and boxes that can be smashed through, stacks of cars to jump over, and pneumatic "car launchers" for shooting unmanned vehicles across ramps and into walls. Using these toys you can build your very own stunt run, and do all the jumping and smashing that you like, stopping only when the car you are driving is totalled. It's great fun, and the physics model is solid. Watching doors and quarter-panels fly off of your car as it mislands from a jump height of nearly 100 feet is a blast, too.

The Driving Tests suffer all the frustration of the Career mode, only without any of the fun payoff. I found them to be largely a waste of time due to the insane difficulty of most of the tests.

The game looks great, and sounds good too (though different voices for the director on each film would have been a nice touch). The level design is clever, if diabolical, and covers all the expected genres from 70's muscle car mayhem to Bond-esque snowmobile chases and German sports cars. Difficulty is extremely high, and failure just means the game becomes ridiculously repetitive, so that's a knock against it. And the movie trailers compiled at the end of each level are often colossally disappointing in not including nearly enough of the actual stunts and too much of meaningless character animation. The DVD features are great, giving a good look at the making of the game, TV promotional spots, and an interview with Hollywood stunt legend Vic Armstrong.

So if you think you can handle the frustration level of having to run the same sequence 50 times to get it right, the game's well worth it. But save your own replays rather than waiting to see it in the trailer when the movie wraps. Your replays are much better records of what sorts of insane things you did.

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