Review: iStunt 2 (Xbox Live)

Score:
84%

Author: Miniclip SA

Version Reviewed: 1.0.0.0

Buy Link | Download / Information Link

Let's drop the '2' suffix (as I can't find iStunt 1 in the Marketplace) and look at the game itself. The first thing to realise is that rather than be a sports game, this a platform game. While you don't have 'run left, run right, jump' as your control layout, you are still asked to explore each level, make perilous jumps, memorise paths through a complicated maze-like structure, duck out of the way of low hanging obstacles... and die a lot.

And all of this happens while you are on your snowboard. Gravity is your friend, pulling you downhill at ever faster rates, and then guiding you back to earth when you take to the air from a cliff edge or little jump. While in the air you can lean forward or back (by tilting your phone) to make sure you land safely (with your snowboard at roughly the same orientation to the ground), but also to score points by doing flips in the air, and grabbing the edges of your board through two soft keys on the screen.

Sure you could play it safe and just make sure of the landing, but all those extra points from jumping and spinning will come in useful - and sometimes you need the momentum of spinning to make sure you get where you want to go, rather than fall short by a few pixels, lose your balance, and tumble off the board.

Here is where I am thankful that Miniclip have not given iStunt a crazy "three lives and you're out" system. You can restart a level as many times as you like, and thanks to the occasional checkpoint flag found dotted through the levels, you can restart just the last tricky section over and over again till you clear it. There's no going back to the menu, there are no dialogs getting in the way, it's just "tap the screen to try again."

This is a good example of making a great game concept work on a mobile device. Miniclip have thought about the environment where the game is being played, alongside the control options available. That iStunt can be played in very small chunks, but still stays exciting after twenty or thirty minutes of continuous play, is testament to that.

There's something peaceful and beautiful as your 'boarder is in the air, spinning, grabbing board ends, and getting set up for the perfect landing. This grace really makes the game, coupled with the potential speeds you can get to (which give you a lot of hang time, and more spinning). Throw in some platform genre favourites, such as pickups to boost your speed, gravity switching blocks so you can snowboard on the ceiling, big fans to blow you about while you are in the air, and whirling circular saws in the middle of the mountains(!), and you have a winning game.

And there's a little bit more here than the levels to play through. As you collect the coins dotted through the levels, these are saved up and can be spent on new characters, snowboard designs, and the ability to skip a really hard level so you don't get stuck on any particularly hard one. It does feel a bit out of balance though, when you get around ten coins per level, and a new character to play with starts at 1000 coins. That cost versus earning potential seems a bit out of whack. Of course, you can buy the coins direct from the Xbox Live store, but this micropayment implementation is a bit blatant. It's the only bad taste in my mouth around iStunt, but I'm going to pretend it isn't there while I play, and enjoy the levels with my original character and snowboard.

iStunt 2 is fun. It delivers a good mobile gaming experience, and feels more rounded than Miniclip's previous Xbox Live title, Gravity Guy (reviewed here). It's not perfect, and the design of the level can sometimes rely on the checkpoint system to ease your frustration at a tricky jump, but it's got all the ingredients, it mixes them together well, and I've no hesitation in urging you to grab this one.

Reviewed by Ewan Spence at 15:15 UTC, April 4th 2012