1 Hour Review: Stuntman Ignition

Monday I happened to click over to Circuit City's website to see their Memorial Day sales and right on the homepage they had Stuntman: Ignition listed for $10. So I asked Nicole if they had it if she wouldn't mind getting it for me while she was in town.

I played the original one for for about 10 minutes back when it was on the PS2. So I downloaded the demo when it came out months ago and thought it was a neat idea for a game series: your a stunt driver filming stunts for various movies and commercials, which include jumps, timing coordination, all kinds of 180s and slides, and lots of "threading the needle" driving.

This is one of the only games I can drive from the behind the car view. Most of the time I feel too detached to drive from anywhere else than the hood/bumper views, but this game was made to see all the things that are happening to the car as it drives the the various sets with explosions and crashes.

This game is made to have it's levels be played over and over again. The one thing they screwed up was that it takes a couple of seconds and button presses to replay a scene. If you stop in the middle and select to replay, it's almost instant, so I'm not sure why if you finish a scene that you have get that level's start menu again. But I've definetly played games that tried to hide the fact that perfection is key and really kill you with load times. Gladly, makes starting over again and again a pretty painless experience.

The game looks and sounds pretty good. I had to turn the volume down a little because listening to the staged movie effects were giving my theater speakers a bit too much of a push. The only problem I have with the graphics is that they sometimes take a little to long to show you what you need to jump or crash into. I think this is a game where you should be able to at least try to get every stunt in the first run, but the icons showing you what to do sometimes load a little late and you have to count on memory to get through some levels (which really isn't that hard to do).

I played into the second movie last night and while I had a bit of trouble getting high scores on the first level, this "Dukes of Hazzard"-esque movie was twice as fun. And the director and his cohorts gave off some really rich dialogue. In one scene the director (a Johnny Knoxville type) promises to give you his sister's phone number if you get all the stunts down. His buddies in the background voice to you how much you should really try to get all the stunts because she's apparently hot and might "think she's Asian."

Overall, this is a pretty darn solid purchase for $10. I never would have paid the release date price ($40-60). But for $10, I'll pretty much buy anything that at least has an interesting cover and name. And the opportunity to raise my gamerscore.