Stunt Driver

While the notion of driving fast up ramps and over parked buses appeals to those with a death wish, even the most safety-conscious amongst us will admit being a stunt man must be a pretty awesome job.

Stunt Driver aims to replicate the thrills and spills of this often-fatal profession via your humble iPhone or iPod touch, but in a particularly apt twist the end result is a mangled car-crash of epic proportions - and one that you’ll be lucky to walk away from unscathed.

The objective of the game is to get your car airborne and score as many points as possible by flipping it whilst in flight. Stunt Driver inhabits some strange parallel dimension where the normal rules of physics don’t apply, because it’s possible to spin your car a full 360-degrees during one of these flights of fancy.

Before you can even contemplate performing such aerial acrobatics, you need to build up sufficient speed to ensure your hunk of metal flies high enough in the air. To do this, you periodically tap the NOS (or 'nitro') button in the bottom-right corner.

Once you gain enough momentum, you can hit one of the many ramps dotted around the arena to get all four wheels off the ground. Flicking a finger up and down on the screen then causes your car to spin in exactly the same way that an airborne vehicle shouldn’t.

Each stage has a score goal that you need to surpass to move onto the next level. Spinning your car is really the only way to gain these points, but you don’t need to worry about crashing and burning. In fact, dangerous driving is positively rewarded.

Of course, crashing means the end of your session, so you need to ensure your lethal feat is going to give you the required points to pass the stage.

As you move through each level you gain access to new cars which possess distinct handling. There are also mini-games in which to indulge, one presenting you with a straight stretch of road, a ramp and the challenge of scoring as many points as possible with a single jump.

It sounds exciting until bad controls, weird physics, and show-stopping bugs drive Stunt Driver into a brick wall and explode it into flames.

The accelerometer-driven controls are twitchy and inaccurate, with turns of your handset producing erratic changes in the direction of your car. Lamentably, there are no alternatives to speak of, so you’re stuck with what is essentially a broken control scheme.

The physics engine makes performing even the most basic jump a real test of determination: your car doesn’t react realistically at all. It’s also appallingly inconsistent, with your vehicle recovering effortlessly from massive mid-air spins, yet managing to erupt into flames at the merest brush with an inconsequential track-side object.

If it wasn’t bad enough, the version we played (1.0) is plagued by force-close errors. We lost count of the number of times the game simply crashed and dropped us back to the Home screen without warning.

Ultimately, Stunt Driver is the kind of game that iPhone has encouraged but doesn’t need. Amateur coders with little experience of what it takes to create a decent piece of software are being given the opportunity to flood the market with this brand of ill-conceived and sloppily-executed drivel, and iPhone fans should vote with their wallets and steer well clear.