Stuntman Ignition

If you’ve ever fancied yourself as an action hero, well, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. If you’ve ever wanted to be a stuntman without getting hurt, this is the game for you.

The whole idea is to perform stunts to the Directors specifications and the better you do, the more stars and points you get which also unlock things. I’d played the demo so many times that when I came to the Aftershock stage from the demo, I passed it with 4 stars the first time.
Playing the career mode sees you go through six films and doing various stunts that require a fair bit of skill. It may seem easy at first, but having to control different vehicles with noticeable handling differences, it may take a few reshoots before you get the take. With timing and precision being the key to success, getting it right is obviously essential as well as keeping up enough speed to string the stunts together.
Stringing stunts together means you get five stars in a similar thing to Burnout Revenge where the more stars you get, the further up the ranks you go. As you rise through the ranks, more movies open up and ‘Odd Jobs’ become available which can either be something like a stunt show or TV commercial, these are ‘boosters’ for your score and rank.
The main annoyance was controlling the bike, some scenes with cars and trucks were fairly tricky, but the bike scenes would have you reshooting at least 5 times before getting three stars. You have two seconds to link stunts and if there isn’t a stunt, just going close to something or doing a quick drift will keep the string going, but there are times when you can’t string it and so have to work out another way to keep it together on the reshoot.
The controls are quite simple with just the usual accelerate and brake, steering isn’t a problem as the cars usually have good handling, the bikes need a bit more practice though. The action button is needed when you need to set the vehicle on fire or nitro boost over or through something and the hand brake button is what you use most of the time due to drifting corners or doing 180° turns.
The scenery is not too bad at all with some good detail and it looks solid, not like just a bunch of polygons stuck together. Even on a standard definition TV, it looks good, but it obviously looks better on an HD Ready TV with nice sharp visuals and great sound.
It may seem to get a bit tedious as you do the same scene over and over, but it’s needed to progress through the game with awards that you can use in your own stunts. In Constructor mode, you can create your very own stunt routine which can be made up from objects unlocked by gaining stars throughout the scenes of each movie. If you don’t want to create your own, then just take a challenge where you get so many props to add to a directors set and play it.
Multiclash is the online part of the game where you can either join a game or create one or if you fancy a ‘Quick Fix’, you can jump straight into a freestyle scene where accumulating strings is the goal. There’s plenty to do and should last for quite a while with a good replay value due to plenty of online play and an almost infinite amount of constructing your own stunts that is only limited by your imagination.
Once you’ve finished the game, you can always go through it to try to improve on your score or to get those stars that you missed. It’s something a bit different from the norm and is enjoyable to play, be daring and have a go at being a Hollywood stuntman…