DRIV3R

"I'm a big fan of the series, but this game does have flaws."

The Driver series has been revolutionary. On the PS1 it was one of the first free roam games that was in 3D. GTA had that horrible top down view. The first Driver game was an amazing game. The second although it had some glitches it was a bit accepted because after all, it was just the PS1 and the main thing to do was drive around which was still fun. For the PS2 (after seeing the GTA games) I expected an amazing game. But it didn't turn out well.

The story is a rip off of Gone in sixty seconds (the new movie) type story. A girl made a deal about stealing 50 cars. Tanner and Jones want to stop her by delivering the last car. While not being very original it's a pretty good story that keeps everything together.

Now for the game play. First let me say that the driving is still great, this is the only part where they kept the game good like its predecessors (there's also boats and motorcycles in this game which are pretty fun to drive). The cars have very good physics and the damage modeling is amazing. And some driving missions in this game can be very hard. This game has at least one freakishly hard mission like the first two Driver games.

The great replays from before are back, the directors mode lets you carefully tweak the replay and do amazing things with camera angles, sadly there's a glitch where sometimes nothing that you actually did is in the replay.

The horrible part is the on foot stuff. In this game Tanner can now shoot guns while out of the car. Tanners movements are controlled by both analog sticks (like an FPS). The biggest problem is that I don't know how Tanner became an undercover cop, because his accuracy while shooting is probably around 10%. An example: You are standing next to a car, you get out a machine gun, clearly put the cross hairs on the tire (anyone would expect that the tire would blow in the first 5 shots at least), but no you can unload almost a full clip of ammo before the a bullet finally hits the tire and it blows. Upon closer inspection of the car (another plus is that this game is able to visually represent around 1000 bullet holes on any car) I see that some how while shooting at the tire a bullet must have traveled sideways to end up almost an the roof. Luckily though, although the shooting is not very good, the bad guys are pretty big targets and with a machine gun the gun fights aren't as frustrating as they could be if they were tires.

Also an addition in this game is that Tanner can now jump and swim. Now I don't know were they got Tanners jump from, but that's the weakest jump I've ever seen. At most he jumps a whole 1 ft. off the ground, yet he is able to jump over some fences that are about 3 ft. tall by just dragging over them. Now for the swimming. A good idea because in those GTA game dying in the water was getting lame. But good ideas need good execution, which this does not have. Not only in control in the water frustrating it has some glitches and just doesn't look real at all. Also for some reason spending too much time swimming kills you...

The graphics are a different story, they're not bad, but they aren't excellent either. They ok. I've played the Xbox version and the graphics in that game look excellent, everything smooth, but not in the PS2 version. Usually this only happens when playing in day or night times (in dusk, dawn, or rain it looks good) . In day it's too damn bright and the it's easy to tell all the "jaggies" on everything. A plus is that they seem to have used real time lighting. At night the lights don't look very good, they look a bit pixelated. Although the graphics aren't that good they are decent and the vehicle graphics are pretty good. Also every city was carefully recreated to match its real life counter part. Pretty impressive.

While driving they added a thrill cam, that gives a cinematic view and does a slow motion effect the harder the buttons are pressed, it can also do a blur effect, this is awesome for the crash scenes.

The CG cut scenes in this game are amazing. They are simply beautiful to watch. All the cities in CG look really good. The story plays really well throughout these. If it weren't for such great cut scenes this game would get a 6 from me.

The sound, a definite plus to the game. The music during cut scenes is good and fits in perfectly, during take a ride the music (no radio stations) fits each city very well, but after hearing it so many times it can get boring. The car sounds are good. Each car has a unique sound. The crashing, explosions, tires screeching, water, and gun shots are all good. Another thing to add to those great CG cut scenes are the voice overs.

Replay value is good. This game is fun to go back and take a ride around town watching those beautiful crash scenes. The cities can get boring because they just don't feel alive.

Overall this game was a missed opportunity to be a great title. The graphics are ok but not great (CG cut scenes are amazing), the sound is also very well done. For the game play, if I just counted the driving, then this is a good game. But, the on foot action really is what stood between this game and awesomeness.
The game is pretty cheap now (under $20), however, it is also very short and can be frustrating, nevertheless, it's still worth the buy. If not at least rent it,the game is playable and there's a lot of fun to be had.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/06/05, Updated 08/03/05