Stuntman Ignition On The 360

[Chopsticks]

Got this yesterday off the back of the Eurogamer review and not much else really, since I hadn't heard anything about it, so it was a bit of a gamble.

 

This little mini-review is a copy & paste of what I wrote up at another set of forums and there seems little point typing out essentially the same thing again.

 

Also to give it more of a local perspective, Mark at Gamesmaster in Ramsey gave me a generous trade-in on Viva Pinata which reduced the cost I had to pay quite substantially.

 

----------------------

 

I've put about 2 1/2 hours into this game tonight, and I'm pleased to report that it's absolutely fantastic, albeit brutally difficult.

 

Every "scene" you do is rated from 1 to 5 stars by the director, just getting one star is enough to unlock the next scene, but you have to gain a certain amount of stars to unlock the next movie/commercial/whatever.

 

Being an OCD anal cunt I insisted on getting at least 4 stars for every scene before I was happy to move on to the next one, and preferably 5.

 

It's fiendishly tricky to do, especially to get the 5 stars, because not only do you have to perfectly hit every "director's cue," you also have to make up stuff for yourself (near misses, drifts, extra air time etc) to keep the multiplier up, because if you don't do anything "exciting" for two seconds (yes, just two fucking seconds), the multiplier resets to zero, and when you're looking at getting the multiplier to 50x and more - that's a big penalty.

 

You only get 5 stars for a perfect "stringing" run which means you kept the multiplier increasing all the way through the stage. 4 stars can be hard enough to get, although 3 stars or less isn't too bad to achieve.

 

As for the aesthetics, it looks gorgeous (not sure how the PS2 will cope to be honest), and the sound is great too, with some really sarcastic comments from the director and excellent use of 5.1 positional audio.

 

Even on the 360 the framerate takes a dip sometimes, so they're going to have to really drop down the detail and environmental effects to get it running nicely on the PS2 - overall however, it looks fantastic and runs really smoothly.

 

I don't think it'll be a game that'll appeal to everyone, it essentially demands between 45 seconds and three minutes of total concentration and damned near total perfection in short bursts, because of course each stage is just a single stunt - but I think it's fantastic, because I can really get into that "striving for perfection" ethic in a game, and am happy to try exactly the same stage ten or twenty times over to get the coveted 4 or 5 star rating.

 

On the other hand, if you're expecting a console game to spoonfeed you everything it has to offer without a challenge, then this will probably really piss you off

 

Here's a (not brilliant) video of me getting a 5 star rating on the very first stage of the game (I initially 4 starred it and proceeded through quite a few more stages afterwards, but decided to go back and try for the 5 stars, which I eventually got, so I filmed the replay).

 

Bear in mind that this is the very first stage of career mode, where you normally expect to be able to get the top rank without too much trouble, but as you can see, it's not a piece of piss (you'll see me deliberately getting very close to stuff I don't have to, just to make sure I don't lose the multiplier).

 

Exciting video. (60MB download.)

 

Overall Chopsticks recommendation, if you've got the determination and the patience, you'll love this game

[the_kitty]

The demo was pretty cool, dont think i would have the patience though