Almost everyone has had a remote control car at some point in their life and for most people, jumping off of curbs and doing tricks made it worth waiting the 7 hour charging period for the 10 minutes of fun. Titus and Team 17, the people that brought you the Worms series, have teamed up again to offer players the same fun experience on the PS2 in the form of Stunt GP.

If the PS2 has a lot of one genre, it has to be racing. Developers have taken everything that moves and put them on a track, with mixed results. What is it that makes Stunt GP stand out from the crowd? The colorful and busy graphics help. While playing the game, you may notice that you are set on a rather boring track that loops you and the other players around. This doesn't mean that outside the track you won't see water fountains, trees, igloos, wrecked cars, billboards and a lot of other clutter. Oh, and everything is huge from your point of view since you are but a tiny remote controlled car. All of the outside objects are exciting, but it would have been nice for them to interact with the boring track. Perhaps it would have been better to race on the objects. Instead of looping around a plain track with one jump on it, you should be able to splash through the water fountain and zoom up the side of a fallen Douglas fir. I think that another effect that would have improved the game by leaps and bounds would be some cel shading. I know that it might be a little overused lately, but this game feels like it's trying to be cartoony and it only makes sense for a cart racer. On the technical side of the graphics, things are good. Textures are clean, and there aren't any jaggies, slowdown or pop-up.

The sound of Stunt GP follows suit with the graphics - that is to say you won't need the Dolby to fully appreciate this one. Most of the sound effects are what you might hear in other games. Vroom for go and screech for stop. The music also won't be memorable, but at least it isn't annoying.

Stunt GP is a racing game, and that's just what you do - race. In the Career mode, you start out by choosing an RC car, and while most of them look different, they all race pretty much the same. It isn't until you start winning races to accumulate some prize money for upgrades that you can notice a difference in performance between the vehicles. Throughout the races, you will see various types of jumps. This is where the stunt part of Stunt GP comes in. By holding the trick button, you can rotate your car in the air and earn some boost. To me, this is the biggest problem with the game. Why would anyone want to perform a trick with a car? People like doing tricks in the Tony Hawk games because the characters have arms and legs to flail and twist around. Not so with these cars. All you can do is rotate forward and backward. I think Spin GP would have been a more fitting name because I'm not seeing any stunts. Even worse than the slap in the face from the 'tricks' is the fact that you only have a 50/50 chance of landing right side up. It feels like you should have the option of firing missiles or koopa shells at the other racers because this is such a mediocre racer, but no such thing in this game. It can be fairly said that Stunt GP adds nothing new or revolutionary to the racing genre. If you want to share the 'fun' with a friend, you have that option in the form of a two player mode. Also, if you have some kind of adverse health condition that makes you yearn for stunts only, you can try out the Stunt mode. It's only one track though and if you think its fun, you need meds.

Stunt GP can be a very hard game in the beginning because your car is not too good, but once you get upgrades, it is easy to stay competitive. Most of the difficulty comes from trying to stay awake without getting distracted. Many a time I was in a half catatonic state at 4:00 in the afternoon. Any time I was able to bring myself out of it, I still had trouble focusing because something would happen like a kitty walking by the window. As I sat there, I cursed the kitty for having more fun than me.

The biggest mechanical problem with Stunt GP are the load times. The game takes forever to load the levels, and once it finishes you would expect to be blessed with a fun and exciting racing experience, but you only end up bored. Even worse than that is the fact that the races don't last all that long and you end up seeing the load screens all the time. Other than the fact that the load screen makes up most of the game time, Stunt GP is mechanically sound. The controls are responsive and analog is supported for the steering. Also, tricks (aka spins) are easy to do. Auto Save is a nice feature and luckily the saving of a file doesn't follow suit with the loading of the game.

What Guys Thinks : Stunt GP is not one of those games that the PS2 will be remembered for, rather it will be one of those games that gets lost in the holiday boom and that is probably for the best. If you are going to shell out 40 clams for a game, there are much better bets and you will probably have more fun with RC Pro Am for the NES.