Game Review: Stunt Paradise

By Al

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PC

Stunt Paradise is a game that's hard to put into any one genre. It may look like a racing game at first, but as the name implies, your main task revolves around performing stunts. Developed and published by Brinemedia, Stunt Paradise is available on the Nintendo Switch, XBox, and PC. We're going to be taking a look at the Switch release today, and hopefully see if this is a game you're going to want to pick up, or if it's one that's best left undiscovered. We have a lot to get into, so let's dive right in!

Seeing as there's no story in Stunt Paradise, we're going to start by discussing gameplay. Right off the bat I have to reiterate that this is not a racing game, or even technically a driving game. You pick a car (Only one is available initially, with the rest being unlockable.) and go through a stunt course, trying your best to not wreck your car in the process. Driving anywhere other than where you're supposed to, flipping your car over, or getting hit by stage hazards like saw blades or bombs, will force you to restart the current course from the beginning. Though it might sound difficult to pull of an entire course in a single run, you'll actually be able to do so easily once you get a feel of what to look for. Most courses will have you do things like go through loops, backtrack to get around walls or barricades, completely flip your car around so you can make it to higher platforms, or even slow down so your forward momentum doesn't put your car into the path of destruction. Knowing what to do next will eventually become second nature to you once you start to recognize the patterns in the course design. That last point is hard to explain, but it eventually lead to me completing just about every track in 1-3 tries. Part of the game becoming second nature is due to the simple control scheme. You never actually get to drive your car around freely, but that's fine since all the courses take you in a relatively straight line. Any twists and turns that may happen outside of said straight line usually will happen automatically. Control-wise you can drive forward, reverse, and lean your car forward or backwards. Though you'll always have control of your car, there are entire sections of the game that just seem to happen with no input from the player whatsoever. These remind me of the speed loop sections in the Sonic Adventure games, where you could clear them if you just stayed your course. The same holds true here, and you'll know when you're in one of these sections when the game suddenly goes into slow motion crash sequences similar to what you'd find in Burnout 2. Though the game is rather simple to get into, there are a lot of gameplay mechanics that provide a challenge for more hardcore players.

Though your only real goal is only to clear the course, you can also pick up stars and extra points along the way. While the points are often simply placed in the path of some of the straightaways, the stars are often placed in areas you'll have to think carefully about as to how to get to them. They'll sometimes require you to slow down, back up, or even put yourself dangerously close to harm's way. There's pretty much no reason to get these beyond completion, but doing well in the courses will also allow you to unlock additional cars. There are 20 cars for you to unlock, but you'll quickly learn that doing so will take you a very long time. Any car that looks halfway decent will take the earnings from several courses, so expect to be stuck in the starting car for quite a while. Even if you do unlock the car of your dreams, you'll find that it doesn't seem to affect gameplay in the slightest. While I understand that different car mechanics could potentially wreck the game's balance, it did make the entire process of unlocking them feel rather pointless. The only real change I ever noticed is that some of the bigger cars provide a bigger target for things like saw blades. Also, I have to mention you have to beat each course in order to play the next one. This means that all courses have to be completed in order, and you're not able to skip ones that are giving you a lot of trouble. Though I don't think any single course is ever too hard to complete if you're willing to put a little practice in, it doesn't make for a slightly annoying experience if you find yourself consistently dying in the same areas.

While Stunt Paradise is an admittedly simple game, I must say that I had far more fun with it than I thought I would. I knew that this was going to be a smaller indie title going into it, but I was surprised by just HOW small and simple things felt when getting into it. After playing for about an hour, I realized that the simple controls and mechanics weren't a negative at all. Doing crazy tricks, finding multiple ways to clear certain sections, and even seeing your car blow up for the twentieth time can be very fun in spite of the fact that it doesn't take much "skill" to pull off the crazy course-winning stunts. Put simply, the game lets you do cool stuff, and it let's do said stuff without having to figure out a complicated control scheme. There's also a lot of charm and humor that's really hard to explain outside of playing the game yourself. There are a few courses where your car will be destroyed as soon as you pass the finish line, and there are lots of areas in the city tracks where you smash past lines of police car GTA-style. That's actually another thing too, as the level variety is quite impressive. You'll visit volcanoes, the open sea, desert areas, farms, industrial zones, and all sorts of other places through the 50 courses. Nearly every course has at least one cool setpiece in it too, and they're all incredible to see in action. There's nothing like smashing through billboards, driving across half-submerged shipping containers, or even smashing the nose off of the Sphinx. That's just a small sampling of what you'll be doing here, and I'm not even mentioning some of the cooler events. Even though there's several sections of the level that feel like they'll happen whether you want them to or not, the courses all display the attention to detail the developers had when they were developing the game's courses. I may have been right about this being a smaller indie title, but it completely smashed my expectations as to what could be done with such a simple formula. I guess my only real gripe is that there isn't more of it to enjoy.

I'm going to cover graphics and music together since I don't really think I have a lot to say about either. I don't really want to open with it, but I think I have to preface this part of the review by questioning how much of this game was created using pre-made assets. When I first started up the game, I was impressed by the music I heard. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was really good. I'd then find myself enjoying the mostly rock-themed music in the courses, and even started to realize that some of the tracks were getting stuck in my head long after I had heard them. I was ready to rave about the soundtrack in this review, and then I noticed that the credits seem to imply that all the sounds in the game came from an asset library. While this obviously doesn't change the fact that I was enjoying the music before learning this, it did make me question if I should give credit to the developers for simply picking out the best tracks from the bunch. These issues then spilled into the graphics themselves, as though the credits didn't out the assets in the same way, I was strongly suspecting that they might not be wholly original from the get-go. I ultimately decided to give the graphics the benefit of the doubt because I simply can't be sure, but the whole music thing left me wondering. All that aside, Stunt Paradise looks and sounds great, and it runs smoothly even on the Nintendo Switch. I guess that's not really the biggest brag in the world, since the game isn't exactly up to the titans of the current generation (And that's putting it lightly!), but they have a sort of charm that gets to you after a while. Despite my issues with the overall presentation, I'm sure that most players will look beyond the negative when they get into the gameplay loop.

I had a lot of fun with Stunt Paradise, but I was a little disappointed to find that there were only 50 tracks in the game. That may seem like a lot, but most of them take only a minute or two to clear, and you can easily speed through half of them on your first run if you're lucky. You can go back to previously completed courses to get any stars you missed, or find the most optimized routes, but I can't see myself going back to the game now that I've completed it. Sure there are 20 cars to unlock, but I found that point a bit moot once I realized that they don't play any different as far as I could tell. This is a fun, quirky, arcade-style game that's the perfect addition to many gamers' libraries, but I can't help but feel that it's fairly light on content. While it's priced at a decently low $7.99, I can't see many going out of their way to pick it up unless they can grab it on a discount. Your mileage may vary on the game, but I think it'd take the average player about 2-4 hours to see everything the game has to offer, and I guess you have to judge whether you think that's worth the price of admission.

Even though it's not exactly the strongest of recommendations, I do think that there's a lot of fun to be had in Stunt Paradise if you choose to pick it up. It's not the most polished experience, it doesn't have the most cutting-edge graphics, but it's good simple fun that's easy to get into. If you have an opening in your gaming schedule, and around eight dollars to spend, then grab this on whatever platform you can and get to those stunt courses already!

Check Out Stunt Paradise on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/stunt-paradise-switch/

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​Story: N/A
Gameplay: B+
Graphics: B
Music/Sound: B-
Value: B

Overall: B

Pros:
+ A simple fun game that feels almost like a simplified, stunt-heavy, take on the Burnout franchise.
+ Even though the graphics aren't the most impressive, the action on screen often is.
+ The music in the game is really good.
+ It's easy to become lost in the gameplay loop and beat dozens of courses in one sitting.

+/- Though I did enjoy the music, it all seems to be from a royalty-free music library.

Cons:
- Some of the cooler moments seem to happen with little to no player input.
- There isn't a whole lot to do once you complete all the courses.
- The various cars you unlock don't seem to affect gameplay at all.
- Feels a little over-priced for the amount of content you get.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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