Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Stuntman

Written by Chris Reiter on July 08, 2002

First Impressions: Want the chance to get paid a ton of cash just to endanger yourself, and most likely many others?

Look danger in the face and tell me what you see. It's the reflection of excitement, thrills, chills, and of course a bunch of spills. Infogrames and Reflections are taking the Hollywood life of an action stuntman and placing its parts inside of a game filled with the right stuff that makes the player pay to play as a suicide stuntman working for exhilaration at an epic height. This spring, prepare for the most likely of all daring titles in console gaming. Prepare for Stuntman!

As a hired stunt performer, you're fresh meat in the movie making business. Basically, you're the face no one's ever seen before in a film, but will soon be recognized as the most brave of any person in the industry. You're to take part in six different movies in six different locations around the world. But what the limit of these movies is able to offer are, the art of driving a vehicle and wreaking havoc throughout. Sounds cool, huh?

Driver and Driver 2 developer Reflections seem to be working the gameplay as a similar, but much-improved game engine than seen in the earlier PlayStation Driver games. With a few gameplay modes in the work for Stuntman, the most interesting of them all would be the career mode where you get to live the life as the stuntman. In the mode, a movie director tells you what to do with the vehicle, and you do it. The catch is that all of your actions are based on a game meter, in which you must attain a certain score to move on to the next movie. After perfecting the scale of action the director hopes to see, that is when you can move on. Most intriguingly, though, after you're done making each film, you can access a trailer of the movie you just created, sit back, and enjoy the show.

Each movie of course will be based on driving. Driving skills will become a major part of the entire game. The vehicles in Stuntman will range from fast to slow. So far, it looks like the player will get to control sports cars -- namely an Astin-Martin, a 1970's Capri, a jeep, a snowmobile, and even a motorcycle. As far as the fun goes, it all lies in how crazy you can be with your vehicle. Your main objective, while being lead by a director, also allows you to get to do those stunning actions seen in action types of movies. Being the driver, you'll experience instances where you'll get to break through walls and endure in high speed chases, amongst other dangerous driving aspects.

Elsewhere, in the graphics department, one key thing that's really going to stand out amongst the rest of the game is how the car reacts to your actions while behind the wheel. Taking the part of life's actual physics, your car or whatever vehicle you are riding in, will get smashed up in every area. A good example is how if your car were to start to head into a barrel roll motion, the sides of the car will dent in and out. More so, the car pieces will actually fall off. Even after this has happened, you can run over the fallen pieces, further allowing the car's shocks to react to the broken off piece. This particular feature is a first for video games.

Mainly, like I've mentioned, the game will focus on the car. With that said, Reflections intends to create an environment where everything that happens to your car is as it would happen to it in real life. One thing you'll see is superb reflections of shadows and light sources beaming off the vehicles. Camera angles that center on the main action will be able to depict dynamic shots of the automobile, and everything on camera should be expected to add a major amount of visual flair to the entire gaming experience that is to be Stuntman.