Every PS2 owner should know about this game...

[Perfect Stu]

STUNTMAN

From Gamespot:

Stuntman has been the game to watch for since its appearance at E3, thanks to its impressive pedigree and intriguing premise. Developed by Reflections Interactive--of Driver and Driver 2 fame--the game puts you in the role of a rookie stuntman eager to break into the big time. The prospect of a Driver-style experience in the world of stunts, coupled with some interesting gameplay modes, has kept expectations for the game high. We visited Reflections Interactive at its Newcastle studio to find out how the game was coming along and to play the latest build of the game.
While still early, the game hasn't quite reached the beta stage yet, but it's coming along well. We were able to test out its various features--our first stop was the career mode, which will be the main challenge in the game. The road to fame will be a challenging one as you walk in the shoes of a rookie stuntman trying to catch a big break. As a newbie to the business, you'll begin in low-budget independent films, with your main goal being the big-budget blockbusters. Your quest for cinematic glory will be spread out across various locations--London, Switzerland, Monaco, Louisiana, and Bangkok--and will have you working on six films that span several action genres.

The films you'll star in are tongue-in-cheek homages to well-known films. Toothless in Wapping is an independent comedy, set in London, that harks back to such films as Snatch and Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. A Whoopin' and a Hollerin', an action comedy set in Louisiana, calls to mind Hooper and the Smokey and the Bandit films. Blood Oath, an action film set in Bangkok, is done in the style of John Woo action films. Conspiracy is a political thriller, set in the Swiss Alps, that calls to mind the Tom Clancy-inspired action movies that Harrison Ford has starred in. The Scarab of Lost Souls is an action-adventure film, set in Cairo, which draws inspiration from the Indiana Jones movies. Finally, Live Twice for Tomorrow is a spy thriller set in Monaco, and it shares similarities with the James Bond series. Each film shoot will offer a number of stunt-filled scenes that you must complete within a time limit. At the end of each movie shoot, you'll be able to access a movie trailer that splices CG footage of the movie you've just finished shooting with in-game footage of your performance.

In addition to the game's career mode, you'll find extra modes and features throughout to engage you, such as filmography, stunt construction, and training. Filmography lets you replay levels you've completed to improve your score. Your score is tallied at the end of each "scene" in the film and is composed of your daily pay, an accuracy bonus (how many stunts you completed in that particular scene), and a time bonus (extra points that are awarded according to how much time you have left on the clock when completing a level).

New Screens


(REALTIME)


*drool*

[Crono]

Not interested...

[nWoCHRISnWo]

Originally posted by Crono
Not interested...

Shut up.

[Perfect Stu]

btw, the game is scheduled to come out for the summer...

and Crono, if you're not interested, don't post...if I see anything similar, I'm taking away dblns

[Perfect Stu]

-NOTE- Sit down for a while...this is long

February 14, 2002 - You can generally tell how successful a development house has been by the quality of its office. The cars parked outside are a good secondary barometer, too, but the building where Reflections resides has an underground garage, so no use checking that end. Anyway, it wasn't necessary to check. The developers of the Driver series have a very, very nice office.
Nice enough that it's hard to say what the potential success of Stuntman, the company's next-generation debut, might buy. Maybe walk-in humidors to put next to each desk. Whatever the proceeds go towards, though, it looks like the game will be a sucess. It doesn't quite have the same instant hook as Driver -- the cops vs. robbers concept is one of entertainment's most enduring -- but Stuntman shares plenty of the gameplay and design elements that made that series a hit. After all, half the fun of Driver was making your own movie. Why not go all the way this time?

The basic design of Stuntman should be familiar from earlier previews -- it's a series of scripted driving challenges based on the stunts of six different movie genres. If it's the sort of movie that features car chases, it's probably here:

Toothless In Wapping: A parody of a parody, really, a play on the Guy Ritchie sort of low-budget bumbling British crime comedy. Ask someone from England where Wapping is, because we haven't any idea. The balance of Toothless' action takes place in muscle cars and police cruisers around the London docks.

A Whooping and a Hollering: Yes, this game was made in England -- how could you tell? The second film switches to redneck crime comedy, a la Dukes of Hazzard or Smokey and the Bandit. The environments are patterned after the countryside around Shreveport, Louisiana, with stunt jumps over rivers and through boxcars.

Blood Oath: This one's done in the John Woo style of Hong Kong action, but it's actually set in Bangkok, Thailand. Some of the stunt chases actually bring to mind the cult classic Diva, though, as the hero pilots a little three-wheeled minicab (called a "tuk-tuk") through buildings and over rooftops. The finesse level required seems to ratchet up a fair bit at this point.

Conspiracy: A political thriller set in the Swiss Alps (perhaps like The Eiger Sanction), with several stunts on a snowmobile. Motorcycles and other two-wheeled vehicles evidently don't work with the game's physics model, but anything with four appendages is ready to go. Bike fans are also advised that a sidecar-equipped model does appear in the game.

Scarab of the Lost Souls: At this point in the game, you're closing in on the big time, working on the new Dakota Scott picture (m'ha-ha). This involves plenty of action in an old Willy's jeep, dodging Nazi armor and crashing through the classic Roger Ebert fruit carts of an Egyptian city.

Live Twice For Tomorrow: And now, the pinnacle, standing in for super-spy Simon Crowne. Set in Monaco, this film has scenes set on seaside roads and the famous urban Fomula One circuit, with a wide selection of Bond-car-alikes (there are remarkable likenesses of the Lotus Esprit, Aston Martin DB7, Fiat 500, and so on).

...to be continued in next post

[Perfect Stu]

....ctd

Once the director and stuntman finish introducing the setup (through pre-rendered and realtime cutscenes), each movie contains about five stunts apiece, ranging in time limit from 45 seconds to two and a half minutes. That may not sound like it adds up to a great deal, but finishing a stunt and executing it perfectly are two very different things. Each stunt sequence is built out of several smaller challenges -- 180 here, e-brake through here, smash something here, make a close pass there -- meaning even the shorter stunts take plenty of time to nail. The game isn't unnecessarily hard, and offers handy presentation elements to guide you (icon overlays and director comments point out stunts in sequence), but practice is certainly necessary to make perfect. Once it's off to the later levels, like the rooftop chases in Blood Oath, the challenge level is more than high enough.

That raises the question, though, of whether this is just the parking-garage sequence in Driver (cursed by more than a few gamers) repeated a great many times. As the Driver games proved, though, the right structure and presentation can make even the most mundane tasks original and thrilling, and the movie sequences in Stuntman are all about presentation. Early street chases may feel a little mundane, but roof-jumping in Bangkok is another matter entirely. Stuntman offers plenty of rewards to those who persevere, too. After straining to complete a stunt sequence in time, the reward of a clean cinematic replay is pretty fair payment for all that effort.

It helps, of course, that the game looks as good as it does. Stuntman doesn't have the flashy reflections and environment mapping of something like Gran Turismo 3 or Test Drive, but it does have some of the most thoroughly-modeled cars I've ever seen, inside and out. Beneath the windows and body shell, the chassis, drivetrain, engine, and interior (even the rear-view mirror) are all modeled in detail, to the point where you can pick out individual bits like suspension components and carburetors. The first-person view is touched up with textured windscreens and modeled dashboards, too. Combine this with a superior damage physics system and you get the best-looking car crashes in videogames, bar none.

Collisions in Stuntman see bits and pieces flying in every direction according to the dictates of the detailed physics model. Cars can lose practically every essential or nonessential piece, from bumpers and body panels all the way to the engine block, and all those pieces become independent objects in the game world, with which your car and others can interact. Sparks fly when metal scrapes the pavement while engine fires give off light and smoke, and inside the car, the driver and passengers are thrown around realistically. Of course, the physics model impresses with more low-key animations as well -- suspension behavior is tuned for each car and looks excellent.

While Stuntman's lighting effects aren't as in your face as those in some other games, it does include an excellent realtime shadowing system. Every object in the game world casts a proper shadow according to its shape and the direction that light is coming from, which in turn overlaps on other objects appropriately. Car shadows crawl up the curb at the proper angle, and buildings shade cars and pedestrians correctly (aside from a few obvious bugs that are being corrected at present). Another noteworthy effect is the smoke and dust kicked up by the back tires -- it billows up from the rear end in big, random clouds, rather than looking too uniform or seeming to appear from the wrong point.

The game's sound rather sits off in a corner by itself, because much of it isn't in the version shown today. Engine noises aren't final, nor are some voice-overs, the soundtrack is a patchwork of finished and placeholder tunes, and volume levels aren't balanced properly. What is complete sounds promising, though, especially the Indy-style orchestral soundtrack in the Scarab of the Lost Souls scenes. Other levels are to receive similarly appropriate sendup music, like James Bond guitar/electronic themes for the Live Twice level.

The aesthetic downsides? Well, the game has the usual bugs you see in an alpha version, things like seams in the environment, a little interlace flicker on those same lines, glitchy shadows, and so on. One issue that may raise complaints past the game's release, though, is the framerate, which will probably be locked at 30. That seems like a pretty fair trade for the amount of detail in the cars and environments, though. The latter are a particular standout, since while you don't necessarily see as much of them in a single mission as you would in Driver, the same attention to detail has gone into re-creating real-life locations, and the urban sections of levels like Monaco and Bangkok are huge (outdoor sections seem a bit Spartan in comparison, but they're still faithful to their inspiration). As in Driver, it's possible to unlock a Free Ride mission after clearing all the stunts on a film, where you can take any car and just tool around town, seeing what there is to see.

That's only the most basic of the game's unlockable rewards. After each stunt, you receive a grade and a bonus (points are toted up as the cash you're paid for your efforts) based on speed and accuracy. To complete a stunt perfectly, you can't miss any of the individual challenges, which are shown on a bar in the in-game HUD. It's broken up to indicate the relative importance of each task -- if each section is green when you finish the stunt, everything went fine. Time is a factor as well, though. With the timecode running in the lower-left corner of the screen (another of the game's movie-style presentation elements, along with the director calling out stunts as they come up), speed is of the essence to create an exciting sequence.

So what's the reward, once you rack up perfect scores in the Stuntman Career mode? That's where the other half of the game comes in. The Stunt Arena mode shows that this game has ties to both of Reflections' earlier projects -- it has one foot in the movie roots of Driver, and the other in the speedway daredevils that inspired Destruction Derby. Between each movie, an arena stunt challenge appears, set in a stadium full of fans (and even orbited by the Goodyear blimp, or a close cousin). These involve everything from bus jumps and flaming hoops to monster-truck car crushing.

It's possible to finish those interim challenges and be done with the Stunt Arena entirely, but dedicated fans of the game will find that it has much more to offer. Much of what there is to unlock in the career mode is contained in the arena, the hidden parts and cars necessary to build your own stunts. It's like the Tony Hawk create-a-park mode, but freed from the confines of a grid-based system and featuring smashable junk sedans. Ramps, obstacles, and special parts can be placed anywhere in the arena and at any orientation, resulting in a massive variety of potential stunts once the full catalog of stuff is available.

To begin with, there isn't much, just a couple of ramps and a few cars. Later on, it's possible to unlock specimens of daredevil gimmickry like remote-control drone cars, special barrel-roll launch ramps, and explosives designed to flip a car end for end. At today's demo, the Reflections reps showed a basic mid-air crash setup, where the player's car headed toward a twisting launch ramp while a remote-control car took off on a collision course. The timing is a little tricky, since the remote car has to take off at the right time, but the result is an absolute kick, and that's just a very basic concept. Serious fans of the game will no doubt come up with all kinds of madness, and it's possible to save any stunt layout for later use (perhaps when you have more parts and cars to add to it) or sharing with a friend.

to be continued in next post...

[Perfect Stu]

...ctd

Other rewards in the game belong more to the realm of simple eye candy, but they're fine specimens thereof. The main bonus for completing an entire movie is the chance to watch a trailer for the film, which blends voice-overs, pre-rendered scenes, and excerpts from the stunt sequences. Thus, each trailer every player comes up with will be a little bit different, depending on how they pulled off the included stunts (and it, too, can be saved for posterity). Even without the added cool factor of seeing yourself in the film, the trailers are fun to watch -- Toothless in Wapping has some particularly entertaining moments, and Blood Oath starts off with a hilarious sendup of the Golden Harvest bumper (the shootouts are fun too, but that goes without saying).

In comparison to the Arena, the Training Games mode seems a little dull. Those challenges are also set in the stadium (save for Speed, which is on city tracks), with five tests each in the areas of Precision, Speed, and Stunts -- respectively, they test detailed maneuevering skills, straight point-to-point speed, and stunt mastery. Of the three, the Stunt tests seem the most interesting, presenting challenges along the lines of Tony Hawk where you have to read a stunt course properly in order to grab a set of floating tokens, but all round, the lack of crashes hurts the intensity level of Training. To add some spice back to the mode, though, Infogrames will be running an online competition where players can register their best test times. Completing training produces a clear code (as in Metal Gear Solid 2), which can be entered in the Stuntman website. The best drivers will be rewarded with neat stuff to be named later, so keep an eye out for more detailed news along those lines.

Also impressive, but not yet finalized, is the DVD Extras section of Stuntman, which follows in the steps of better movie productions and games like SSX Tricky by packing in a set of documentary pieces and trailers. The complete selection of extras isn't decided yet, but several possibilities are being considered. A making-of documentary is almost certain, with a look behind the scenes at Reflections and the research the game's artists put into building the environments, as is an interview with Vic Armstrong, the famous stuntman and action director who consulted on the game's production (his credits include Charlie's Angels, Terminator 2, the Indiana Jones pictures, and some recent James Bond productions). To show off the roots of the game, there may also be some documentary footage on stunt driving throughout the ages, featuring intentional crashes all the way back to the Model T. Some music videos are likely, featuring the licensed tunes of acts that appear in the game (including Yvonne and Overseer), as are a couple of teaser trailers. No guarantees as yet, but Stuntman may include a first look at V-Rally 3 and Driver 3.

Before you get all hot and bothered about a game that we probably won't see for a year or more, though, remember to keep focused on the subject at hand. Stuntman may not be quite as instantly compelling as Driver -- it's based on a more unusual premise, and its gameplay isn't quite so easy to pick up and grasp -- but it looks like it has the same qualities that gave Reflections' breakout game such unusual intensity and longevity. Pulling off the perfect stunts in Career mode is a real challenge, and gearheads should be able to do all kinds of things with the Arena once they get their hands on it. And even the less dedicated, though they may not appreciate the game to anywhere near its fullest, should get a kick out of gawking at gamedom's finest car crashes.

-- David Smith

*PHEW*

[Joeiss]

Yeah, I read that on IGN.

And this game looks sweet, I will definately be buying it come summer... But I will most likely get it for my b-day!

[The_Dunadan]

i hope it isn't too hard or too easy. i'll probably rent it before i buy it.