How Jet Car Stunts Has Driven Me Up The Wall

It took me twenty five attempts to complete the second tutorial level of Jet Car Stunts. Twenty. Five. In a tutorial level. It was at this point I realised that the game was not what I had expected.

The trailers and previews seem to imply the game was a spiritual successor to one of my all time favourite games, Stunt Car Racer on the Amiga. Race around a geometric track in a futuristic car with accurately simulated physics, jumping over huge ramps and performing perfect landings. If you were lucky enough to have a friend who also owned an Amiga you could link the two up with a null modem cable and play head to head.

Jet Car Stunts has geometric tracks, accurate physics, a futuristic car and massive ramps to jump over. It also has that three letter word at the front of the title that makes it a completely different game to what I was expecting: Jet.

Although it may seem you are driving a car in the game you are not, you are piloting an F15 without any wings. In Stunt Car Racer you used the turbo before a ramp to gain the correct speed to jump and land softly, in Jet Car Stunts you use your jet to gain speed on the land and then continue to use it as you fly through the air. You also have to control the direction of the vehicle by tilting it, and as it’s a car rather than a plane, this very hard and the slightest mistake will mean you miss you landing zone or smash head first into the scenery.

As the jet has a limited capacity you have to work out when to use it and the only way to do that is through trial and error, and with only ten restarts per level the only thing that was getting stunted was my life expectancy as I became increasingly frustrated.

The levels, of which there are 36, have been designed by Satan. Leaps of faith and blind corners are prevalent and sometimes there is absolutely no indication where to go. I’ve managed to complete the “Very Easy” race levels (although minutes behind the ghost car you race against) but I can’t work out where to go in the “Very Easy” platforming and collection levels. I can race round and see where I’m meant to get to but there doesn’t seem to be any way to get to the platforms and I frequently get to the end of the level having missed everything and there is no way to turn back. The road just ends, it’s as simple as that, a couple of helpful arrows painted on the incredibly sparse scenery would have improved the game to no end.

It doesn’t help that you car is as fragile as glass and blows up the instant you hit an obstacle at speed, or that the tracks themselves are suspended in mid air so the tiniest miss-steer will send you plummeting to your doom.

There there is the camera. Whilst the levels were designed by Satan, Satan’s super evil twin brother who is having an incredibly bad day programmed the camera. When you are mid air and tilt the car the camera flips 90 or even 180 degrees, completely screwing up any hope of landing safely as your controls are now backwards. Check out the video from the PC version (which annoyingly does have big pointy arrows to tell you where to go) and you’ll see what I mean, start from about 40 seconds in and watch the camera go mental, disorienting the racer so he flies off the track.

The game has a multiplayer of sorts in that your friends ghost cars can be downloaded and you can race against them. Not having a head-to-head multiplayer mode in a racer seems a little silly these days, especially when Stunt Car Racer managed it back in 1989, even if you did have to lug an Amiga and your TV round to your mates. The most amazing thing is that Jet Car Stunts started life three years ago as a mobile game, quite how you controlled what is effectively a brick with a jet engine just by touch is beyond my comprehension.

The game is obviously not for me which is why this is not review, for a start I would never, ever be able to complete the game and unlock the levels. However, there are some gamers who relish this kind of challenge and although I’ve never run a marathon I imagine the feeling on elation when you cross the finish line is akin to the sense of relief you get when you complete a level in Jet Car Stunts. It’s a massive achievement just to finish a level, even if it is by blind luck rather than any skill and there are gamers who will spend hours trying to knock off an extra half a second during the races, or have the patience and timing to complete the platforming levels.

Jet Car Stunts would best Dark Souls in a fight and run off with its girlfriend, it is the most ridiculously unforgiving, bastard hard game to hit PlayStation. If you want a challenge then by all means give it a go, just don’t blame me when you’ve thrown your PS Vita against the wall and smashed it to bits.