Game Review: Stunt GP

Game: Stunt GP
Console: Sega Dreamcast
Developer: Team 17
Release Date: 8th June 2001

From the people who brought us the Worms series, there's an extreme remote control car racing experience for the Dreamcast. Stunt GP sees you in control of these re-chargeable mini monsters around some crazy tracks with the goal of unlocking the secret cars in arcade mode, and finishing a season of racing as champion in the championship mode. There's also exhibition, 2 player, stunt and time trial modes which are exactly what you'd expect them to be.

The arcade mode has different starting tracks for each selectable car on a branching grid, and you work your way towards winning every final race, at the top of the grid with each one unlocking a new car. The choice between tracks in this mode is good, and there's quite a lot of cars to unlock. The target position it gives you for each of the four races goes incrementally from 4th to 1st in the final race. As a rule I'd prefer it to require all first places, as its not too difficult to do.

The tracks themselves are on the whole quite well designed, with jumps and places to do stunts in the air. Some tracks feature hills which are a little steep since the cars begin to struggle on their way up, and can fall off completely if they don't gain enough speed. The best tracks tend to feature either a lot of jumping sections or a mix of fast straights and challenging banked corners. The driving system doesn't work too badly, although the cars slide very easily and can travel quite a long way when bumped into by rivals.

The championship mode is probably the best experience in the game, as you are allowed to customise the parts for your car as you earn money from winning races. There's plenty of internal parts to choose from and making a balanced car which performs well with the resources available can be fun. Championship mode features more laps around tracks than arcade mode which can make races feel a little monotonous and give the player a distinct advantage as sometimes the computer players pit unnecessarily.

The real problem that this game faces in terms of gameplay is that the framerate suffers from a lot of slowdown during races, hovering between 20-25 fps most of the time which makes it difficult to control your car accurately. Added to this the camera angles can be a little strange at times, switching to unhelpful veiwpoints when you're stunting in the air, or going around a corner. Although these could be forgivable, they happen far too often and added to the somewhat slidey driving physics it disappoints overall.

Graphically the game isn't bad; its nice to see a remote control car racer feature a standard 3rd person viewpoint instead of that of Micro Machines V3, where its hard to see what turns are coming up. There a nice selection of cars which look good, and the backdrops are fairly detailed on most tracks. Soundwise there's a selection of funky almost elevator music to accompany the games, but its bearable on most tracks.

Overall the Stunt GP experience could have been better. With a fix to framerate issues and tightened driving physics it'd have been far closer to seeming like a finished product. With a lack of AI challenge and some questionable camera angles at times, its a game that seems enjoyable in concept and sometimes in practice whose negatives outweigh its positives. I used to play this a fair amount when a Dreamcast was the only console I had, but having been exposed to better racing experiences through other Dreamcast games and racing games on other consoles, it seems that I didn't know any better at the time.

Rating: 59/100
Grade: D