Demo: Stuntman: Ignition

I remember playing a bit of the first Stuntman game for the PS2. The idea of recreating action scenes in a movie as a stuntdriver is absolute testosterone on a disc.

This year, around E3 time, a bunch of demos have been popping up on Xbox Live. I love demos. It's a free way to spend 15 minutes with a game, which for all games except RPGs is usually enough time to tell if you like it or hate it.

I like Stuntman.

Being a car-based game, I'm immediately biased. I should get the Burnout game logo tattooed on my arm. I love action driving games that blow up stuff or make you smash into things. Stuntman is full of that stuff.

The one thing that was bad about the previous game, and fortunately is gone in this iteration, was the disc loading times. In a game where you are constantly failing levels (which is part of the fun), the last thing you want to do is wait. It's like fireworks that only go off every 5 minutes. Each one may look pretty on it's own, but stringing them together just gets your blood pumping.

And that's a big deal in this game. Stringing stunts together in a time-oriented fashion gives you more points. What I don't like about that is in today's generation of games are sandbox style. They give you a playground and tell you to go have fun. Obviously in a movie film set the camera waits for no one. So it makes sense here that it isn't open-ended gameplay. I think being to slow in this game is going to frustrate a lot of people. Get a little off the timing, make too many mistakes and you start over.

Luckily, for some of us, starting over is fun. Stuntman feeds off of anal retentive people and rewards them. This isn't the type of game thats fun to make it through each level without dying or losing.