DRIV3R

"Tanners back, but he shoulda took a sick day."

Driver has been a series thats been very near and dear to my heart, since my adolesant years I have loved the series. However, since the release of Grand theft Auto 3 and Vice City it has been very hard for other driving games to compete with the rapidly growing series. This game is no exception.

Graphics 8/10: The graphics in this game are one of the only strong points. The game has some great grpahics, especially on the cars and the car damage physics. This is the only driving sim I have ever seen that has roof, side and engine damage, plus all the other points such as doors and windows. You can pop tires, and unlike GTA it has an Impressive physics system on its doors, where if the door is hit towards the car it will slam shut, and if it is hit away from the car it will break off, opposed to running right through walls or trees like GTA. However, this is where the Graphics die. The rest off the graphics are mainly produced on the platette. Things like clothing, walls and trees are all grainy and semi 2D. These graphics look like they could be easily made on the original Playstation.

Gameplay 8/10: The gameplay is what you'd expect from your typical Driver game, driving, running around. However this time around its fairly dry. General driving around is fairly boring, and becomes even worse when you are stuck in a slow vechicle which when you crash into things like trees or light posts stops you in your tracks. This is frustrating because how can one smash through concrete posts, barrels and walls but not even put a dent into a lightpole? On ground it is fairly lame too, It only becomes exciting to blow up cars with grenade launchers and such, but other wise it is dry too. The single player is almost a hybrid of the original driver. Go here, pick up them, drop them here. And it seems that almost every level has a twist. You can never just trash the gang, you have to escape too! One positive to the game is swimming. No more laoding because Mr.Vercetti can't swim. Thankfully the loading times are low, so when you do die you can restart with ease.

Sound 6/10: The sound in this title is fairly normal, except the music tends to get very boring. The game features a super cool film director system, which I find to be one of the only reasons to play this game. However, say you want to make a movie where its eerie, or that someone is going to get ran over, it is very hard to do because with only the one song it doesnt set the mood like it should. The SFX are weak too, the cars all have extremely similar horns, and sounds arnt really emphasized.

Replay 9/10: The replay for this game is Very High, especially if you have Xbox Live. Theres nothing more fun than making a sweet movie, uploading it and watching the ratings fly. Plus you can get hours of fun watching other drivers flip, blow up and jump they're cars. If you like the Take a Ride mode (WHich I find boring) You'll get even more fun out of this. This campaign is easy to beat but you can always replay any mission you want with the "Replay Mission" mode. Plus there are 3 citys to cruise through, Miami, Nice and Istanbul.

Overall 7/10: This game had Great potential, but unfortunatly it was wasted by premature releasing. In my opinion, I think they should have taken out 1 or 2 of the citys to spruce up the remaining citys, the game is fairly glitchy, and that should have been checked. Too much space wasted on extra roads, because the fun comes from driving along roads you know, not driving along similar streets the whole town.

Buy or Rent? Rent. Even if you LOVE driver rent it, it might just not appeal to you. If you're into the Film Director mode I would suggest waiting for a price drop and then pick it up, That's what I'm going to do.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/26/04