Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
For Playstation 2
Buying used games has advantages. Wait a week and a half, and get it 150 crowns cheaper (more if you can wait longer, but Henrik couldn't in this case :-). Having always been more into computer games than consoles I haven't been able to make use of this. Guess it's just too suspicious when people return with a new PC game and want to sell it again ...
A side thought you can get into after this is who returns a game a week or so after release and why. Or rather, who buys a game that they know so little about that they're so disappointed they only keep it for a week. I guess average console players somehow get less attached to their games than I, and feel no need to keep them for the memories :-) ...
Subject?
Back to it?
What?
Oh!
Yes, Stuntman. Henrik got it used a week and a half after release around here. You're the stuntman, driving in car scenes in six different films. And in the case of this game I can see how someone might resell it after a week. If you were to set up a scale to measure driving games' scripting and restrictiveness on player actions you'd get GTA 3 on one end and Stuntman on the other. You're in a film set, you have set goals to accomplish and there's only one way to do it. Fail and you start over. I read a review yesterday, and they found the whole setup immensely frustrating.
I honestly thought I'd feel like that too, especially after seeing and trying the demo a while ago, but I've changed my mind a bit. There's actually a bit more room for error than you might think. Your time limits are from one part of the scene to the other, which means that if you crash and lose time between two tricks it doesn't matter for the rest of the scene as long as you get to the next part before the time runs out. You don't have to make all the stunts in a scene perfectly either, just a set percentage of them (starting at 75% and increasing over the films). That usually isn't a problem though, once you get all the way to the end in one piece you tend to be familiar enough with the scene to hit most marks properly along the way.
Yes, every time you fail a scene you start over from the beginning, needing to redo everything you did last time (and the ten times before that). I haven't found this frustrating yet, but I have been playing with Henrik and switching the driving job between us on each retry. I think this is the right way to play Stuntman, with someone else. If I was alone in front of this I'm pretty sure frustration would grow on me, especially just at the end of long scenes. Still, the scenes aren't that long. Not yet anyway, we'll see what the future holds ...
Once you finish all the scenes for a film you get to see a trailer for the film, with a mix of rendered cinematics and cuts from your driving. Not Blizzard quality by a long shot, but I still like it.
The driving itself is solid, but what would you expect from the people behind this many driving games? I have more fun driving in Stuntman than I had in the Driver games. Of course, things being this set up for looking cool helps a lot. The next step in driving games will be games that set themselves up to situations this cool on the fly :-) ...