This is what happens when I play Stuntman.
I drive through the fence and jump over the roof and knock off the chimney without difficulty, but when I try to jump over the two railroad flatcars moving in opposite directions I crash. The next time, I make it past the trains and the burning building, but I can't jump through the moving boxcar. On the third try I don't even make it past the roof, instead hitting the chimney at an angle that lands me upside down on the road. Suddenly I can never get past that chimney, and flip over five times in a row.
Was it five times? I really need to stop playing. OK, I'll just finish this level. So I jump over the swimming pool but get crushed by the falling smokestack several times in a row. Then I have a bad stretch where I can't get past those stupid trains near the beginning. Then I make it all the way to the billboard but run out of time.
Maybe I should just stop and do this later, but the billboard must be near the end, and I did get that far once, although I fail to do so the next seven times. Wow, it's getting late. I know I should stop, but I'm so close. Look, I made it past the billboard again and set off the nitro booster. Oops, I did that wrong. All right, just two more times and then I'll give up and go to bed. But the second time I am amazingly close. And then finally I've made it to the end, and I think, well, why not just quickly see what the next level is like and then I'll go to bed.
If Stuntman's intent is to keep me up all night, it succeeds admirably. This stunt-driving game straddles that fine line between impossible and nearly impossible, convincing you repeatedly that next time you will make it.
In Stuntman, the player drives a car through a series of movie stunts, the sort of car chase scenes and crashes that have been with us since cinema's early days.
All stunts must be performed within very strict time limits, meaning that you must drive at full speed while crashing through walls and jumping rivers, chasing cars and trying to drive close -- but not too close -- to explosions.
While I have never been a gaming perfectionist, Stuntman makes me want to carry out every mission perfectly. The player's stunts are played back in a stylishly shot and edited cinematic sequence, and when you see your car awkwardly turn a corner, bump into a wall, reverse and then scrape some paint off before going forward again, you don't care that you beat the level; you feel so aesthetically displeased that you want to keep playing until it's perfect -- until you careen around corners in smooth, glorious, screeching arcs, until you knock over every barrel and every movement looks like something out of a movie.
Some missions are so difficult that I was content to just get through them in one piece, skipping optional stunts and driving badly, but I know I need to keep revisiting those missions until I can do them perfectly. Otherwise I'll never work in Hollywood again.
Complete all the stunts for one of the many films you work on, like A Whoopin' and a Hollerin' or The Scarab of Lost Souls, and your final reward is to see your stunts edited into a slick movie trailer for the film. If you drove well enough, you might want to go out and see the movie for yourself.
While Stuntman demands near-perfection from beginning to end, for the motocross racing game Freekstyle you need to execute perfectly only for the last 30 seconds. And this is the game's biggest flaw.
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