Driv3r review Thread

A stylish, involving and refreshing experience that makes its own stamp on the driving free roam genre that has been dominated by Grand Theft Auto. However comparing this to GTA is misleading and in-appropriate on many levels.

Driver instantly failed to impress me when I first popped the game in. The first thing I dove into was free-roam expecting a GTA experience with lusher graphics and more mature surroundings. Boy was I wrong. My first encounter brought up many of the negative points I had been reading about which left me a little disheartened to say the least; however 6 hours later I can confirm that this game has made love to me and left me grinning like a 12 year old boy after his first kiss.

Lets start off the with the many good things; first, the graphics. As you've no doubt seen from the screenshots floating around this game is moody, well lit and has some beautifully modelled cars. The effects used are also fitting - an example would be the headlight smearing when you do a sharp turn at night - the effect isn’t that impressive per-say, however it does add that depth and polish that makes the game seem lovingly made. The cars also shine and gleam as the sun or headlights pour onto them making them look almost photoshopped onto the game; the road also boasts this effect, and quite like PGR2 it makes the road feel alive. Roads were almost forgotten about until this generation of games, now most games incorporate a proper shine and polish effects on the roads that is something small yet much needed to the graphical polish.

However, the graphics aren’t as lush and stable as the game deserves. Sure, the road and cars you can see are beautiful alongside the tall realistic buildings however the visibility is a huge factor. As you are driving along pedestrians, buildings and cars will pop up left right and center which greatly detracts from the experience, I’m sure the reason for this is due to the surroundings being so nice but it would've been nice to have a better balance between the graphics and pop-up. Another let-down is the framerate. The reason I felt so let down with my first time was the awful framerate - It seemed solid up until the point where the police (an integral part of the game for most people) started attacking me. That’s when I had to start swerving to dodge traffic and taking shortcuts, but quite like the first two drivers the framerate dipped to a poor 20fps (I’d guess) making it almost unplayable. However the framerate seems more like an optimization problem, as the frame rate doesn’t always dip during heated battles, just occasionally in most areas - some seem sparser and obviously handle it a lot better.

The pedestrians, people involved in the story and Tanner (you) are all lavishly detailed with facial hair, fashionable clothes and realistic looking faces. However the animation comes off as stiff and missing of key frames. The animations in general are poor, which is depressing considering the amazing CG cut-scenes that show how well we can re-create humans and their actions. The animations aren’t always triggered correctly either, numerous times Tanner has got out of the car on the wrong side or will stand there moving left or right when I try to enter a car which unfortunately ends in my death from people attacking me.

The actual driving, the supposedly main aspect, (which seems more secondary this time round) is superb. The cars skid correctly and glide over hills and mounds resulting in a stylish replay. The steering also differs from some cars which is great fun to play with - police cars handle like bouncy balls which makes for a great time jumping around the well placed hills, ramps and mud barriers. The driving also seems to represent the feeling of speed brilliantly, you can literally whizz up and down the long stretched roads feeling like the god of speed dodging on-coming traffic (if it doesn’t pop up too late).

The missions test your driving and on-foot skills quite equally. The missions link into the story, effectively drawing you in. Despite being quite guessable and straight-forward the story is interesting and has a wide range of characters that require different things from you which makes for well placed missions and varied locations & objectives. However it seems some missions were made to push you to your limit as they require numerous attempts to get it right - this can get quite frustrating when a mission requires you to drive half way over the town and then have an all out shooting war, if you die its back to square one - driving backwards and forwards never felt so dull.

The director’s mode and the replays are Fantastic! The wealth of options and character choices you have really makes it feel like a complete separate worthy entity well placed into the game. The replays can be saved and viewed along with Live! options too. Nothing beats completing a mission, replaying it and patting yourself on the back for doing a great job. The replays only take up a few of your thousands of Xbox hard drive blocks so its not big deal if you do feel almost compelled to save everything you’ve done so you can sit back and feel like the man watching yourself kick arse all over again.

The user HUD, the main HUD and the options interfaces are all clean, small and welcoming; as is the game which slowly teaches you the basics by making you drive to the police station to do a shooting course which isn’t stressful or to difficult, unlike the missions later on in the game. Despite the difficulty being ramped quite high later on it seems a fair balance earlier on in the early game.

Another well-placed entity in the game is physics. Since Half Life 2 debuted at E3 2003 the most wanted feature for games has been realistic physics integrated into everything. Driv3r has done a nice job of this: barrels roll and tumble away as the car swerves into them, people roll over the bonnet of the car as you pull backwards and the general items around and on the ground act realistically. Not so realistically as the car damage however. The cars crumple, strain and fall together like they should (as well as tire-blow outs). No game has ever accomplished this so well, not even TOCA 2 or GTA. You genuinely feel unsafe in your car and smashing into police isn’t an option as it results in a short life-span for the car, which would lead to getting out to the poor shooting on-foot sections – which we’d rather not do due to the poor aiming system and terrible visibility.

The sound and voice acting is nicely done and seems true to the location. The main characters seem to have a nice list of things they say and pop-up randomly, the enemies you face seem to talk trash and egg you on. Also the police radio telling you what the police are saying about you seems to have been downgraded - the police seem to only give common directions and the occasional ”need backup“ which was a let-down.

It’s also worth noting of a few small features that have been added. You can swim, which was a huge want for GTA fans, however it seems Driv3r put it in first, it doesn’t particularly add anything to the game but it makes for a few sneakier get-aways. Also motorcycles are in, they can wheelie and boy is it fun! They easily lose the police as well, which is always a good thing.

The main problems with Driver seem easily fixable in my opinion. Another two or so months fixing the framerate and pop-up would've made it a much more drawing experience that feels complete. The animation as well seems almost correct, but just needs that fine tweaking. My biggest problems with driver were initially due to the fact that it isn’t GTA. Now I’ve been converted the classier, much more thought out methods of Drivers integrated story and straightforward game play - its almost like comparing no-frills crisps to Doritos - One is cheap yet tasty and keeps drawing you back but the other is classy and fattening but not quite as addictive.

Reviewed by azz0r on the 23rd June 2004
Playtime @ beginning of review: 8 hours
Total score: 7.5 Ub4r-l33t modDBspanners out of 10

+ Looks well rounded
+ Directors mode
+ Physics
+ Brilliant car physics and damage
+ Three big well-made cities with lots of awesome cars

- Framerate & dodged textures occasionally
- Police ai isn’t as vicious as the past two games
- Iffy animations
- Not very addictive

Best moment
Being chased down the main road @ 80mph on a motorbike, leaving the police for dust and then crashing. The police caught back up obviously and as they got close one car flipped over my motorbike sending it into a rapid rolling stone for 8 or so flips. I got back up and got the motorbike and went to drive past but a copper crawled out from the overturned car and headshot me instantly. The bike carrier on - I hit the ground like a ton of cement.

Worst moment
Being chased by police into a court-yard, they wont enter but they kept shooting sending people into the yard for slaughter bait, got shot to death trying to leave.

- Edited By azz0r On Wed 23rd, Jun 2004 @ 6:31:04pm

Did it play smooth during the best moment?

Nice Review, i wont be getting the game though.

no, the framerate often ends up drop kicking you in the teeth when you least want it too.

screenshots, website? O_O

cHIs-wK wrote: screenshots, website? O_O

for someone with there sig like that...

Dont ask, just google it!

Screenshots will be in the review, however as he said, use google.

Hmm, I played this, but I didn't play it long enough to realy fall in love with it. I'll be sure to try it again.

Very good review, I might add. your word use is presise and almost poetic.

ITS CAUSE IM LAZY AND I FIGURED HE WOULD ADD IT THERE

thanks for the review azz. very well written. you played this on? xbox?

Yeppers

azz0r, your review makes me want to not even go near the game until its price tag is at 20 dollars. Framerate of 20 during car chases? Damn, that can't be good. I can't even believe they would release it too the public like that. And the fact your sourroundings just pop out of nowheres makes me mad. It seems to me, your review insist that if you put driv3er vs gta 3 or vice city. driv3r wouldn't be able to compare unless of course you want swimming(which you can't do in gta).

- Edited By klowns On Thu 24th, Jun 2004 @ 6:09:42pm

he has a point

what point. Driver cant compete properly with them because the engine is shit, I made that perfectly clear.

I don't know about this review after renting the game, eugh what crap. The driving (which they supposedly spent so much time on) sucks sooooo badly. The on foot movement is stiff as hell. And they took out the fps view that i wanted to drive in sooo much. TBH, ign's review hit it on the nail. This game gets a 5.5 in my book. It just didnt come together for me. The overdone skid, the shitty physics( i mean come on i go over a curb at like 30mph and it i guess i hit it and the wrong angle and i barrel roll?!?!). And the missions are pretty boring too. I really hate games where if you loose time you have to restart the mission then restart again, then again, then gain, then do this like 1000 times until you finally catch the jerk. It gets really frusterating. And don't even get me started on the street polls... omg they are like re-enforced titanium or something they are unbreakable. i could hit it at like 100mph and it will stop my car and flip me over. If i were you guys i would stay away, its not worth your time, believe me.
Xbox.ign.com

- Edited By operativex On Thu 1st, Jul 2004 @ 1:22:47am

Its getting mixed reviews everywhere really, some people love it others hate it.

Forum.teamxbox.com as proof of the first thread I came across.

I agree on the lampost thought, but if you went into a lampost over her you car would just wrap around it, lamposts dont move - trees do.

:o i saw an advert for this

looks real good

But i dont know if ill buy it as I really dont play my consoles much :/