Toy Stunt Bike is an attempt to follow the trail blazed by successful skill racing series like Excitebike and Trials. Instead, it ends up being a textbook example of all the things that can go wrong with this kind of game.
Over chairs and dominoes
The basic idea of the game is as simple as it is challenging: as a tiny motorcycle rider on an equally tiny motorbike, your task is to complete 60 short courses featuring several different obstacles in good time, earn points for long and high jumps and mid-air tricks, and attempt to collect all three of the flags distributed in each level. It’s necessary to complete at least one of these tasks before you can unlock the next course. Most of the courses are so short that you can complete them in one minute or even much less than that. This means that it takes a surprisingly short amount of time to complete the game – it’s relatively easy to finish the whole thing within two hours.
What makes Toy Stunt Bike special is its setting – instead of racing through picturesque landscapes, all of the game’s courses take place in someone’s house, with the rider and his little motorcycle proceeding through the living room, the office, the kitchen, the bedroom, etc. Similar to genre classics like Trials and Excitebike, the object is to get through each course as quickly as possible by making skilled use of speed, brakes, and leaning forwards or backwards. But watch out – the path to the goal is covered with obstacles, and in this case that might include a soccer ball, dominoes, chairs, loose nails, a remote control, or even a toilet. Make sure to avoid crashing and falling at all costs, otherwise you’ll have to replay certain segments of the course.
It soon becomes apparent that the level designs are somewhat mediocre as far as quality goes, and the difficulty swings back and forth between very easy and very hard, which mostly has to do with the placement of the various obstacles. Checkpoints are generously distributed throughout the game, but even these often feel misplaced, often coming after several easy segments without no real difficulties to speak of. One thing that constantly reveals itself to be a major weakness of the game is the awkward perspective. The view from the side doesn’t reveal enough of the track to allow you to react to obstacles in time, and sometimes it feels like you’re just playing a game of chance, removing any sense of control or orderliness from the gameplay.
The physics system in Toy Stunt Bike is similar to the one in Trials, though at no time does it reach the level of quality or logic to be found in that game. Once you’ve gotten a good look at it, though, it’s not all that hard to adapt to its peculiarties. Only seldom is the gameplay ever really motivating, though, and the multiplayer component consists of nothing more than a ranking list to compare your times with other riders.
Low-quality, buggy, and in 3D!
In terms of graphics, Toy Stunt Bike is simple and lacking in diversity. Settings and objects come off lifeless, like someone just randomly set up a bunch of objects from around the house with no particular rhyme or reason. If you turn off the (actually pretty solid) 3D effect, the 2D bitmapping produces some pretty nasty-looking jagged edges that make the overall image look crude and blocky. It’s like they’ve never even heard of anti-aliasing. There are also several annoying clipping issues that have a negative effect on gameplay. It’s not uncommon for riders and their bikes to get stuck in objects after a wipe-out, requiring you to start the whole course over – and this happens way too often. Music and sound effects are kept at a minimalist level.
Bom
"It’s like they’ve never even heard of anti-aliasing."
To be fair, it probably runs at 60fps. It will look less promising
Good
GooD!
авы