Ready to be the unknown stuntman that makes Eastwood look so fine? Again? Well, you can now, because there’s finally a sequel to the game that caused many bald spots (players ripped their hair out because of the sheer difficulty of the original Stuntman game on the PS2).

Just as those bald spots had finally grown back here’s Stuntman: Ignition and it’s going to have you reaching for your hair very quickly. Not to rip it out, but to check that it hasn’t gone all spiky because of all the hair-raising stunts you have to perform for the director yelling in your ear.

The premise remains the same as in the original game; you’re a stuntman trying to make his way into the movies and, handily enough, after filming a commercial, sorry advertisement (dunno why these Americanisms are slipping in), the director hires you as a stuntman for his next movie. Film! Dammit.

With each new mission there is a bit of a routine you have to go through. It’s a routine of routinely messing up, working out where the correct path is through the explosions, and finding the correct line to get yourself in the correct position for the next tricky stunt you have to perform. Sometimes this routine can go on for a long time as you learn the intricacies of the scene, especially on the later levels where the action goes on for ages. It can be quite intimidating at the start with the director barking orders such as: “Go through the gap! Jump the house! Pick up the groceries, while doing a reverse 180!”, and many more hectic things. All the while things are exploding around you, cars are being flipped through the air, terrorists are shooting blanks at you and you’ve got to pull off drift turns, 180s, reverse 180s, U-turns, mad jumps, ram other vehicles out of the way and all sorts of other coollooking stunts. Stunning ones, even.

It’s this learning curve that might put people off. It’s not steep, it’s just bitty, as you begin to learn the course section by section, or stunt by stunt. You get five chances to mess up, however, and usually this is enough to see you through the mission, in the early stages at least. But it does get to the point where you end up learning half a level properly only to be scuppered by a few confusing stunts. Sometimes it feels like the next stunt is announced too late. Some of the stunts are marked by large squares in which you have to perform the stunt. However, when you’re racing along at high speed and see a square you tend to start guessing what stunt will be required. Then, as the director finally tells you what it is you have to do, there sometimes isn’t enough time for you to react. That’s okay though, you can restart it and prepare for that section. Of course, you’ll probably mess up the next one, but you can see how progress is made in Stuntman: Ignition – stunt, by stunt, by stunt. The strange thing is, it doesn’t get annoying.

How weird is that? A game that you have to keep retrying in order to get anywhere, and it doesn’t become frustrating. In fact, you’re more than likely to begin your next attempt with more zeal and more planning than you did before and this launches Stuntman: Ignition into the ‘just one more go’ party, which is never a bad thing in videogames.

Perhaps it’s the rewards you get for completing a scene well. Depending on your rating and how well you’ve performed certain stunts, you’ll be able to unlock cars to use in the other modes, plus a colour modifier for your vehicle and all sorts of badges, medals, and other shiny things. It really feels like you’re making immense progress even if you only get a two-star rating.

In Ignition you just have to complete the scene to open the next one and you don’t have to get a five-star rating either, though doing so increases your rank dramatically and gives you access to the next movie much more quickly. The way to get a good ranking is to string your stunts together to increase the multiplier. There isn’t enough time between each stunt to keep it going, but you can do other things such as driving close to traffic cones and other vehicles on the road. This is your ultimate goal – to put together a seamless run through the mission, while stringing all the stunts together. It’s going to take a lot of restarts to do that, but when you do get it right your heart whoops.

Rounding off the whole Stuntman package is a pretty cool online mode where you try to ruin another player’s chances of getting a good run, while also trying to stop them ruining yours. And, of course, there is the level editor so you can make your own courses and annoy your friends with them.

Tim Empey