 Driver for Sony Playstation
If there's one thing the hyper-competitive and overcrowded Playstation game market
didn't need, it was another driving game. Driving games are a dime a dozen anymore,
and with the exception of Gran Turismo or the Need For Speed series, most
aren't worth the money to buy or the time spent playing them. What the genre could
benefit from (as any genre could) is a breath of fresh air, some originality in a cut-
and-paste world.
While Driver may not be completely original in its components, the end result is
pretty fresh. It's like a cross between Grand Theft Auto and a racing game
like Gran Turismo, with elements of the overrated Destruction Derby
games as well. This last bit of information is probably no coincidence, as they were
both developed by the same company, Reflections.
The basic premise of the game is as such: you assume the role of Tanner, an
undercover policeman. You're sent to infiltrate the world of organized crime, using
your skills as a driver to aid the criminals in achieving their goals; whether it be
making a getaway from a bank job, carrying a package somewhere to make an
exchange, or disabling a fleeing vehicle to get at its occupants. All this unfolds in the
game's storyline, or undercover mode.
Before you can even begin the undercover mode, however, you have to complete a
training course. You go with your potential new employers to a parking garage where
you have to complete a set of specific moves in less than a minute. The moves include
a burnout, a slalom between the garage's columns, a 180-degree spin, a 360 degree
spin, a brake test, and a reverse 180. This took me several attempts before I finally
got it right, just before extreme frustration set in. Once you complete this training,
the storyline mode begins.
You begin your adventure in Miami, and from there you head to San Francisco, then
Los Angeles, and finally, you end up in New York. Along the way, you'll use your driving
skills to aid your new cronies is their criminal exploits. Most of the missions basically
involve getting someone or something from one place to another in a specified amount
of time. A couple missions involve repeatedly ramming another vehicle to disable it.
These are wildly fun, but usually a couple hits will knock the other vehicle out of
commission, so the fun is short-lived. A clock at the top of the screen counts its way
down to zero, and if you haven't completed your assigned task by then, you start all
over. Also, you have two meters that you need to watch. One is the damage meter,
which obviously, tracks the damage done to your vehicle. If it maxes out, your car is
toast, and your mission ends. The other meter, which can be even more troubling is
the felony meter. Every time a cop spots you doing something illegal, like speeding,
running red lights, and anything else your typical criminal would do, your felony meter
goes up. Get it too high and the cops will start setting up roadblocks. Some are
avoidable by skirting them on the outside, but on narrow roads, it's either turn tail or
get it up to ramming speed. Max out the felony meter, and you'll have cops
materializing out of thin air with murder in their eyes. They will ram you with extreme
prejudice, and they seldom miss when they have you lined up.
At the beginning, most missions just involve one stage, but as you progress, they will
have two and three stages. The three stage missions can be maddening, since you can
complete one stage, only to mess up the second, resulting in having to start back at
square one. Once you make it to the third stage, though, you will only return to the
beginning of the third stage if you fail to complete it. But, the damage to your car will
accumulate over all the stages, and I've found myself at the beginning of the third
stage with my car near death, resulting in it being virtually impossible to complete my
mission. If you begin a stage with a severely damaged car and severely pissed off
cops, you may as well pack it in, Margaret, because your odds of finishing the stage
are slim. Couple this with a rain stage (traction is virtually non-existent, making high-
speed cornering a dodgy proposition) and your chances are even more insignificant.
This is all done in a definite 70s movie style, with funky music, and big gas guzzling
vehicles abound. The gameplay is a bit exaggerated, which should come as little
surprise to anyone who played either of the Destruction Derby titles. The driving is
also straight out of an action movie, in that you can wildly skid around corners with
tires squalling. Your hubcaps will even fly off during hard turns, providing even more
of a movie feel. The gravity is pretty light, which results in big air over jumps, and wild
collisions with almost cartoonish results. A side impact collision at high speed is likely
to send the other car spinning wildly down the street for a very long distance, and in
the rain, cars skid around like drunken Eskimos. (?)
Graphically, the game is above average. The cityscapes look very good, and the
other cars, while basically all looking the same, look nice as well. The stages at night
are very nice, and in night stages with rain, reflections can even be seen in the
pavement. Your car will take damage corresponding to what you hit, and where on
your car it hits. If you sideswipe another vehicle, your car shows damage on the
corresponding side. If you rear-end a vehicle, your headlights are knocked out. Get
rear ended and lose your tail lights, and so on. The cities have recognizable landmarks
(such as San Francisco's Transamerica Building) and, as the game packaging states,
"working traffic systems." I can attest to this, as I sat at red light waiting for it to
turn green so the cop on the cross street wouldn't chase me. Eventually, the light
changed, and off I went with no tail. I won't hazard a guess as to why the cop sat at a
green light without moving; who am I to judge? The intelligence
of your police pursuers seems to wax and wane throughout the game. In some stages,
you can reach your destination with a whole slab of bacon on your ass, and your
mission ends successfully. But on other stages, just one cop on your tail results in
you not being able to stop until you've lost him. This can be pretty aggravating, as
some of the stages are impossible to complete with any significant amount of time
remaining, leaving you little time to waste on losing a tail.
Driver ends up being a bit less than it wants to be, and
definitely less than it could have been. The premise behind the game is one of the
coolest and most unique to come down the pike in a long time. Unfortunately, some of
the game's quirks can get annoying, and the basic repetitive nature of the missions
(drive fast to get somewhere in a short period of time) sap the replay value severely.
Often, you simply drive down a straight road for a minute or longer. How about a
curve or two? A two-player mode would also have been a great addition, with one
player being cop to the other player's robber. The attraction of the "free ride"
segment is pretty limited as well, unless you want to explore that much to find any
short cuts, or you just feel like creating as many wild crashes and multi-car pileups as
possible. This one is fun for a while, but before long you'll wish there was more to it.
Review by ICE |