Tristan Cole [elocnat]

Preamble: It's hot as hell. Was planning on cooking tomorrow but I'm doing ribs again since it seems like it's gonna be raining for a week straight. Sitting inside this go around...and I already hear thunder so hoping these finish up before it starts coming down. That said bring on the rain! Also, halfway through writing this I realized I can make these as long or as short as I want and don't have to go full essay if I don't want to. Also if I was playing on PC I'd include some gameplay clips or screenshots to break up my writing...maybe for some future titles.

Stuntman...what an interesting game. I still can't decide if I love it or hate it. I don't remember a bunch about this game except that I found it incredibly hard as a kid and did not enjoy it. Likely the only reason I even played it is because I was a big Driver fan and saw it was from the same developers (Reflections Interactive). It's not that the Driver games weren't difficult, but I spent a lot more time in Driver 2's Free Ride than I did anything else just enjoying the driving and the city.

The gameplay of Stuntman is relatively simple on the surface: you're a hired stunt driver required to pull off stunts the movie director tells you to with a few freelance jobs thrown in between films. The game was commonly referred to as a 'tech demo' for Driv3r, and I can see why: along with the simple premise, it just kind of feels like a plain game (not in a bad way). There's not a bunch of flash, the UI is relatively low key, and it's not very 'gamified'. I say this with fondness as that's a big reason why I really liked Driver growing up: it relied on its core gameplay (the driving) to carry the game and didn't have a bunch of extra fluff - I really love the use of everyday pedestrian vehicles instead of a standard musclecar & supercar lineup.

The secret sauce of Stuntman, that I didn't see as a kid and I'm sure most people missed because the game was too difficult, is the satisfaction of successfully completing a stunt. The game is stupid difficult in some spots, and unfairly so in a lot of others. I'd pay $100 to see anybody who hasn't played the game before beat a scene on the first try - I'm not even sure it could be done with some of the easier ones. The game relishes in your failure and making you retry time after time after time until you nail the entire run. You don't have to get it perfect, but more than a couple slip ups and you're not getting out of it without trying again. When you do nail a full take though, it just feels good.

The payoff for finishing a film is that you get to watch a cheesy fake movie trailer with your stunts spliced in. (Just to note, I'm not 100% convinced they always use your individual replays as some stunts I pulled didn't seem to line up for me, but that could just be bad memory.) It's clear the team had a fun time making these fake films and I enjoyed completely finishing all the scenes to get to that end trailer. After all the frustration the various stunts put you through, it was nice to not only know you're done with that film but also to see the fruit of your efforts didn't 'go to waste' (or were just in place for the game to be a game...if that makes sense). The difficulty is frustrating but just adds that much more to the sense of accomplishment.

Unfortunately the game does have other flaws. The difficulty itself wouldn't be nearly as bad if restarts were quick. You're going to restart at minimum ten times on the majority of scenes it feels like, and every time you do you're going to be waiting 10-15 seconds to try again. Even when the game decides to play relatively short cut scenes, sometimes multiple in a row, each comes with their own minimum 10 second loading period. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're in the action and especially trying to nail a stunt, the momentum really kills you and helps you focus on how frustrated you are. I see why I didn't get far in this game as a kid and I can see why even as adults most people find it too difficult to bother with. While the core physics are good, the game also has to give an extra helping hand in places to make sure stunts are performed correctly. If you're tuned into the driving physics this can feel weird, but is also especially frustrating when the game expects you to hit a ramp a certain way for example so it can twist the car just right. Also somehow what should have been the most fun side mission, the monster truck race, was the most frustrating by far because there was no stabilization!

There are a bunch of QoL tweaks I feel like they could've made to cater to the more casual crowd. For example a quick run through of what stunts were going to take place in the scene would have been nice - who just lets their stuntman go in blind? Especially when the cutscenes constantly talk about how serious and calculated of a job it is! Obviously the loading times could have been improved and/or a quick restart of some kind implemented. The game could have had much better/less frustrating AI - for example the car you're chasing would be too slow half the time or a car you're trying to pass would intentionally speed up to smash into you. Since the physics differ so much vehicle to vehicle, it would have been nice to have something like a quick parking lot lap to get used to them before the scene (again shorter load times and this wouldn't be as much of an issue).

Funnily enough Stuntman: Ignition seems to have a lot of those tweaks. It's also a much more casual game; if we consider Stuntman a traditional 'movie', then Ignition feels like a B movie. It's got worse (but easier) handling, a points/combo system, has much easier stunts to pull off, and generally is a lot more gamified than the original. I have only played the first handful of scenes from the first film and don't remember playing it as a kid at all so I won't go into it, but so far it's a lot more out of the box 'fun' than the original. Still, the driving physics are much better in the original and it feels way more satisfying to complete a stunt. I can see the merits of both but it's clear the second game did a 180* from the original (likely as a response to the mixed reviews).

Overall I was extremely frustrated while playing Stuntman this go around but I was sad when it was over. I'm not sure if it was worth the constant rise in blood pressure but there's just something about nailing a take perfectly after retrying dozens of times that makes you feel like "Yeah I did it fuck you game" in the best way. 'Driver physics' nail that perfect blend of easy to pickup but hard to master that makes pulling off realistic-ish cool stunts so satisfying. Ignition may have some good QoL upgrades but taking away the 'Driver physics' kind of takes away the soul of the game, and although fun, I just want 10 more films to rage through in the original. Maybe someday I'll make a Stuntman-ish game; I've got a few ideas....

Later.