Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Almost, but not quite"

Driver follows a simple premise: it's Grand Theft Auto, without the walking and shooting. There's some major gaffs, and there's not much original (nor much of a story), but the game still generates some fun.

As Tanner, a cop with major driving skills, you're tasked to go undercover as a wheelman to unmask a major criminal plot. Your journey takes you to Miami, L.A., San Francisco, and NYC as you gain trust through your skills and come closer to finding out the nefarious plan unfolding behind the scenes. As you may expect from makers of demolition derby games, the physics are loose and not very realistic, so you'll get a more arcade feel than that of real driving. The story does play a backseat to the action, as the game is 100% cutscene, mission, repeat; if it disappeared, you'd never miss it. Missions only come in a few flavors, like getting somewhere in a given period of time, evading pursuit, or chasing and disabling a fleeing car by ramming it. In the end you'll be left with the mother of all game-ending missions (which honestly verges on unfairly difficult) that will test your patience as much as your skills as you try to prevent their scheme from coming to fruition.

The cities play a starring role, and while they may not be totally authentic, real landmarks and matching terrain make each one play differently. The developers really used them almost as characters, with San Francisco's hills really adding a twist to the game. Music riffs are nicely-done, if a bit 'cheesy porn'-sounding in some spots, and of the sort you might get in a gritty chase/action movie. Checkpoints--when part of the mission--are tight, but not unfair; most can be gotten to with 10 to 15 seconds to spare with a minimum of difficulty. The occasional ability to choose missions from an answering machine gives a bit of personalization, leaving you to judge what type of mission each will be and pick your favorite. There are also a nice variety of minigames from the main menu, most of which are versions of game missions, suitable to practice or challenge your friends.

The generally sub-moronic police A.I. is a real weak point. They're too easily tricked into slamming into poles and road traffic, and will mindlessly try to barrel through immovable road dividers if you're on the other side. The city maps should be easier to access, and that the radar rotates to show your movement as moving to the top of the screen (instead of staying still and giving your icon a direction indicator) can make getting your bearings difficult when cross-referencing it to the large map. So does idiotically starting some missions with your car pointed the wrong direction or making you back out of a parking spot. Some re-doing of 'go-to' halves of missions when you then fail the 'escape-from' half is a bit insulting. Worst of all is the voice acting; it sounds like they just grabbed some people off the street, handed them a script, and told them to ham it up.

While nothing in the game can be described as tight, due to the extremely elastic physics, the controls still can be your friend if you master the over-steer correction button. The car models are rather nice, and even recognizable even without any branding or logos; you can tell a Mustang from a GT, though nothing's ever called by name. The cityscapes do have a bit of "pop-up" in the distance, but get reasonably detailed up close. The few sound effects are also decent enough, but not as delightful as the music. The minigames do add a bit of value, but there's no other replay value to the forgettable story. The terrible things in the game are thankfully in forgivable/non-essential areas, and if you can look past them there's still a fairly fun driving game to be had underneath.