Sound: 7
Gameplay: 8
Replay Value: 8
Reviewer's Tilt: 9
Overall: 8.4
The graphics are mostly good, but there are a few problems. My biggest complaint is the grainy look, it does not work well and makes me feel like this is a driving game powered by the Silent Hill 2 engine. The textures are gritty and dirty looking, and the framerate is usually constant, albeit lower than we expected. The car damage is the real eye catcher here, with excellent car crashes and physics. When you jump over a very high ramp, your car will come crashing down, and you can expect pieces of your car to disappear. Sometimes it's a door, a wheel, sometimes it's the engine. Your windshield will become shattered after a couple stunts, and parts of your vehicle will be dented in. Stuntman gets it right with the graphics.
I've only heard one song in the entire game, and I've heard it way too much. It's in the commercial, it's in the trailer, and it's in the Stunt Constructor. And to tell you the truth, I'm tired of it. Oh wait, there's one more song that plays during the menu, and it's by the same horrible artist. Who is that guy anyway? I can't stand him. The sound effects and crash sounds are very well done, which save the overall sounds from totally sucking. The director yells at you often, and his cues come in a little too late during a stunt.
The gameplay is actually a mixed bag. There's nothing funner than driving up a ramp, using the turbo and launching yourself across a river. There's also no better feeling than driving through a burning hoop. But this all comes at a price. Sometimes, it's a rather unfortunate, unforgiving price. You have to work very, very hard to achieve all your goals. You have to know what you want and how you're going to do that. And sometimes, thanks to Stuntman's lack of directions, it's difficult to pull off. You never know what you're in for in Stuntman. The CGs may look nice and pretty, but they don't tell you jack. You're in the car, and you're driving, and that's it. You swerve to miss a car, or a grate, then you ram into some boxes, then you jump on a ramp...sounds easy. But in reality, it's not. You don't know what to do until the last 2 seconds of a stunt, and then you're forced to do it. Mind you, there's no instructions, no demo, nothing. There's no checkpoints either, so if you mess up at the very last thing, you're forced to restart the whole entire segment. This is not a good thing, and really brings down the overall score. Usually, directors film only a few parts of a stunt, then yell "cut". But here it seems that you have to play out the whole scene, which is really complex and difficult. There are a lot of stunts to pull off, and naturally you are timed.
Stunts require God-like precision. If you mess up, which is more than likely, you will have to restart and go back to the horrible loading screen...which isn't long, but isn't very convienent. The load times are only bad the first time, ranging from about 35-50 seconds. You might want to change the channel while loading or read a magazine, take a nap, something...just to keep you entertained during this pathetic portion of the game. And you thought Quake III Revolution was bad?
With all the complaints, mostly coming out of the gameplay department, Stuntman is a must own for the patient gamer, and fans of precision-driver games. It's a really difficult game that will turn 90% of you off. But the other 10% will be amazed by its shear brilliance.