Now that's what I'm talking about

The world needs more driving games where you spend as much time off the ground as you do in Stuntman.

The driving genre has been getting pretty creative as of late, with a large handful of games looking to break the mold of Gran Turismo style attempts at pure simulation or the endless line of boring street racing games centered around gaudy chavved out cars. The most visible carrier of this torch of change is Burnout, a series of games centered around extreme speed and the art of the crash. Any game with mode that rewards the total monetary destruction of an acident is alright in my book.

However I still think there's another level of innovation just waiting around the corner. It was hinted at by a good-but-too-damn-hard for PS2 a few years ago called Stuntman. The basic idea is almost equally puzzle and driving. You were tasked with performing stunt driving scenes in a series of fictional action films which took place in fairly traditional settings(among others an Indiana Jones clone, a James Bondish spy thriller, and my personal favorite the Dukes of Hazzard knock-off). The puzzle element was in the fact that all these scenes had to be performed with exacting percision, or you'd have to start again. Let's just say that while I enjoyed this game quite a bit, I probably yelled at it more than any other game in recent memory(except that fuckhead Astro Boy).

Well according to 1UP, there is a sequel in the works, pictured above. Titled Stuntman: Ignition, it's a next-gen update to Stuntman that looks to be taking the concept to the extreme. I find myself positively giddy at the prospect of playing this title. The difficulty level has supposedly been made much more reasonable(although hopefully not too much), and the graphical upgrade is amazing. If you need more proof of this games Hotness, head over to Gamevideos.com and check out the trailer.

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Dead Space: First Impressions

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