DRIV3R

"Driv3r comes right after Driv1r and D2iver."

Tanner is a nice guy. He protects the streets from the tyranny of scum. He walks (heh, more like scuttle) the streets with a mean scowl and when he gets to his car...He's the Driver.

Welcome to Driv3r, the 3rd installment to Reflections smash hit series. From acclaimed success of Driver and Driver 2 comes this new Tanner. He's got a pimped-out badass voice now (Michael Madsen, none the less) and he sure has decided to be more like a Tommy Vercetti and a Dick Justice. The sheer sales numbers of the GTA games must have been melted on to the developer's minds during development. Believe me, it shows.

The game gives you a nice little tutorial with no time limits or anything, before slamming your whammy in the doorway as you enter the next level. They expect you to race to a scene of a siege perfectly, with no slip ups (If you did crash or go off-course, you won't recover) or slow-downs. If you fall too far behind your fellow cops, it's game over. Already. These driving missions are meant to be fun! Not gratingly tedious first off the bat. It does give you the drop on what's to come in the so-called "harder" missions...

The game Driver is about driving, so that's where all the effort went into. The actual cars. The models are all designed wonderfully, with the whole package being topped off with responsive handling, brilliant physics and a whole lot of mayhem. Genius. And that's not all! If you want to see some real beautiful effects, just get out a gun and shoot up the cars. Tyres will blow out, bullet holes will be ridden into the sides, paint chips, windows crack and splinter into thousands of shards. Sadly, the game does take a step away from the driving aspect, putting Tanner through long, shootout missions through abandoned buildings...not that great and far too tedious. Thankfully, Reflections still kept their infamous "Take-A-Ride" mode, allowing players to rip up the streets of 3 cities doing whatever they want, whenever they want. It's great for learning the ins-and-outs of the map before going through them in the Story mode, as well as just plain old sight-seeing.

The real let down, as mentioned before, is when Tanner is out of a vehicle. Driv3r suffers terribly from relying on on walking or standing around. It's now way too easy to complete missions if all you need to do is get out and shoot the drivers of the car chasing you. Back in the days of Driver, it was about sheer skill, no dirty tactics as blowing up the enemy car with grenades.

...Should you buy this? Well...if not for the story, do it for the cars.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/11/05