Review written by Mike "Sponge" Rubits

Buy Stuntman Evolution from Clickgamer

Stuntman Evolution is Douglas Beck's latest endeavor, and despite a couple of short delays, it's finally met its release. Judging by his past, I was expecting only the best of Stuntman Evolution. But to be honest, for a while I had some doubts. Perhaps it was the lack of information released, and it's rather ubiquitous scope, but something seemed like it wouldn't match up to the likes of RocketElite and Motocross Stunt Racer. I'm quite happy to say that disappointment was nowhere to be found.

Graphics

Stuntman Evolution's graphics don't really seem like anything special until you really play the game. Its engine is based around 3D isometric tiles, which allow for complex shapes and terrain. In fact, besides the foliage, everything is rendered real time in 3D. If it weren't for the smooth rotation of the vehicles, I would've easily assumed the vehicles were hand-drawn sprites. This is, needless to say, quite a compliment.

There are about an average amount of tiles in the game, solar panels, some generic futuristic buildings, and so forth. Not exactly the most unique, but this, along with the foliage, manage to populate the world quite nicely. The tiles themselves have the basics: sand, grass, concrete, and water (which looks slightly out of place due to no shoreline tiles, or animations.)

Framerates are generally high, although highly forested areas did cause a bit of slowdown on my H3955. With an isometric engine, at times you can expect your player to be shrouded in trees, or hidden behind the terrain. There's nothing wrong with that; avoiding this completely would lead to some very boring levels. However, how Stuntman Evolution handles this can cause much confusion; utter suicide for time-based missions. Your vehicle becomes semi-transparent, but the effect is so minute that sometimes it's quite hard to even tell if it's on or not. This has led to way too many occurrences of where I'm either trying to go forward, although I'm crashing into a wall, and worse yet, this adds a whole new degree of difficulty to jumps. What I would've rather seen is the obscuring terrain become transparent, although this may be too intensive for most devices. Luckily, Digital Concepts were mostly successful at designing levels that stop this annoyance from escalating into a nightmare.

Sound

Most of the aural experience in Stuntman Evolution is made up of the varied soundtrack, done by many different artists. The styles of music can be seen throughout the levels, making me want to move on if only to hear another music track. Not once have I turned off the music (besides during the times where I shouldn't be playing games, but we'll leave that for another article ;)). Games like this make me wish more full quality and length soundtracks were available for listening outside of the game.

Sound effects are somewhat limited, however I only realized this sitting down to write this review. There are a few sounds, mostly UI related items, and the whooshing sound of jumping. For once, I can't complain too much; the only additions I would've liked were engine sounds and other ambience, but if this is the only problem with the sound, they did a pretty good job in my book.

Gameplay

Describing Stuntman Evolution is a pretty tough task. It's one of those genre-crossing games - except this one actually works. Right off the bat there are similarities to GTA, minus the violence. There are a total of 6 made-up locales, each with a different problem stopping you from successful passage. Trying to restore power to a bridge, delivering medical supplies to a desert oasis, and blowing up.. well lets just leave that one for you to find out. This is similar to GTA in the way you can explore to your heart's whim, and do objectives in any order you wish; there's an open world at your hands. Stuntman Evolution seems somewhat inspired by the famous Tony Hawk Pro Skater series, with searching for hidden packages (which, sadly, is more of a Where's Waldo exercise, than an exercise in skill.) and finding gaps; basically making a usually tricky jump from one place to another. However, it's truly an original creation, and trying to categorize it into existing PC games is pretty unfair.

Each level is based off of 100 points, which can be gotten by finding new vehicles, points of interest (signs, people), gaps, packages, and objectives. Stuntman Evolution swerves away from past games by completely removing a minimum score to pass, although some levels will force you a certain amount of objectives in order to pass. This is definitely a plus for some of us; I personally have never been a fan of games that force you to reach an arbitrary number before you can go on. Although the last level has the endlessly irritating "everything or nothing" type mission, i.e. if you lose, you start from the beginning of that level. As long as you know where your going, it's simple, keeping me with my hair for a little while longer.

The physics system is mostly solid, although exploiting the physics is easy to do, but hard to control. The engine doesn't seem to like high speeds, and button mashing. These two combined, I've been able to jump so high that I can't even see ground tiles any longer. You'll really have to watch your speed, harder than it sounds considering acceleration is just on or off.

One of the unique things about Stuntman Evolutions is the add-on capability, already built in the game from 1.00. From the main menu you can access the level editor, which, not the game's fault, is downright painful on the PocketPC's constricted screen. The level editor is just about as simple as the game, literally. Raising/lowering terrain is done the same way as with the bulldozer, although you're not limited to a range. Clicking and holding on a border tile results in a white line. From there just simply press up or down on your pad to raise or lower the land. I have to wonder how this will be migrated to platforms without touchscreens, since this control scheme is also essential to the gameplay, but that's an issue best left to another site.

One of the more exciting features is the scripting language. Stuntman Evolution uses the somewhat-known Lua language (which actually makes an appearance in a few PC games, Far Cry being the most recent.) in order to achieve the missions in it's levels. This leaves opens quite a many possibilities in what can be done to the game and it's missions. Luckily, adding in sprites is possible, so with enough work, total conversions are more than possible. Sure, it's no MegaZeux or ZZT (brownie points for people who remember those!) but it's still more advanced than most anything on the PocketPC to date, and it's much easier than learning C++.

If there's one weak point in Stuntman Evolution's gameplay, it has to be the controls. Although it comes down to a stylus or D-Pad, and 2 user-defined buttons, the game is about moving in diagonals. You lose a surprising amount of precision with the stylus, due to the fact it's very hard to align on the axises. This makes some jumps very tough, and horizontal jumps (i.e. straight left or right) are just flat out annoying to execute. Thankfully, the more you play, the easier this gets. In a close second would be the limited levels. I was able to complete all the levels on my 2nd day of play, however I'm still working on the challenging task of getting 100% on each. Even after that, the levels are fun to replay.

Stuntman Evolution is relatively crash free in 1.06, and recovers fully from being suspended. A minimize function would be nice, however this is mostly negated by the addition of quicksave, which was oft requested in the earlier revisions.

Breakdown

Graphics: 9/10

Vast landscapes, dense forests, and a great looking isometric engine make Stuntman Evolution one of the better looking games this year. Fast devices shouldn't have a problem, although my 3955 suffered from the occasional slowdown.

Sound: 8/10

Excellent music is only overshadowed by the lack of sound effects. Considering this is barely noticeable, and the music is excellent, this isn't that big of a deal.

Gameplay: 10/10

Finally, a unique game. Stuntman Evolution's gameplay is truly one of a kind on the PocketPC, and while it draws inspiration from some PC games, it's limited to that: merely inspiration. The built in level editor (as annoying as it is to use) and Lua scripting language only make things better.

Pros:

• Beautiful isometric engine

• Open-ended gameplay

• Extensible built-in level editor

Cons:

• Controls occasionally tough

• Small amount of missions

Conclusion:

Stuntman Evolution is a must have for any self-respecting gamer. It's just plain fun to play, and offers a lot of replayability in terms of the built in levels, and the possibility of add-ons. Great graphics, and catchy music only add to the experience. As usual, Douglas Beck has come through again with a killer game at a modest price, with the expandability a lot of us have come to expect from Digital Concepts' games. As for me, I'm anxiously hoping we get some cool custom levels, hopefully sometime in the future you might see something interesting from me!

Score-by-score breakdown

Gameplay:  100%
Graphics:  90%
Sound:  80%

Overall:  100%

Please note that the overall score is more than simply an average of the individual ratings.  Many thanks to Digital Concepts for providing our review copy.

You may wish to search for more reviews of games from Digital Concepts. Alternatively, you can view all the reviews written by Mike "Sponge" Rubits.