DRIV3R – PS2 – Review

One of my favorite things to
do with my friends a few years ago of course was to play PS on weekends, staying
up late and going through any number of driving, sports, or action titles
throughout a Saturday and Sunday evening. One of these that I particularly
enjoyed was the original Driver, as I remember friends and I would constantly
try to see who could use the glitches the best and do things like shoot our own
cars or cop cars 400 feet in the air and things like that after head on
collisions. Well, here we are again, getting another installment to the Driver
series with Driver 3, but unfortunately I think it’s safe to say that this
version has definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Driv3r once again stars it’s
leading man named Tanner as he this time goes undercover to bust a ring of car
thieves looking to ship some high-end vehicles overseas. Basically, you
accomplish this by going through a series of pretty well-acted cutscenes and
some missions (which I’ll get to in a second) which will have Tanner doing
things undercover both in and out of his vehicle. Ultimately, think GTA III with
you playing as an undercover cop versus a bad guy.

There are three modes with
this installment of Driv3r as well, most of which fans of the series will be
familiar with. The main one is the story mode, which progresses you further into
the game. The next one is called “Take a Ride,” in which you can just drive
around to see the sights, carjack people, and evade the police (again, think GTA
III). Lastly, you can also run a series of challenges with things like
checkpoint races for fun and some new unlockable stuff. In addition, the
director mode is present in here as well, so players can once again take replays
of missions or their “Take a Ride” footage and change camera angles and add
effects to make their own little action movies.

The controls to Driv3r are
pretty standard to similar games in the same vein, but ultimately also become
it’s first big downfall. While the in car controls use the right stick to
accelerate and brake and the left to steer (or you can use the X and circle
buttons) and the out-of-car controls mirror FPS controls, everything feels very
stiff and sluggish. You can switch between third- and first-person modes during
the game, but this won’t do anything to really speed it up or make it seem like
it runs better. I thought I had some issues with speed in third person, but then
jumped to FPS and found it to be equally as slow. This wasn’t only on foot, but
also in the vehicles as well as even top of the line sports cars handled like I
was driving a yacht out of water and down the expressway. 

Another issue here is in the
AI, for both good and bad guys alike. While doing one mission where I had to go
into a hotel and search for a car that was hidden in a garage for example, there
were enemies on every floor of the building that I ran across. Just to tell you
what you will experience, here’s a typical scenario for you … get out of the
elevator, see bad guy, bad guy will make no moves towards you at all. Shoot him
three times before he draws his weapon, he’s dead before he can get a shot off.
Anyways, for me personally it made the game pretty dull overall when you run
into this kind of stuff.

As for the car chases … the
cops are a little more relentless while in pursuit of you, but once they get out
of the car they get about as stupid as the bad guys that I just talked about.
Anytime a weapon is drawn, they won’t really go after you … but instead will
stand idly and shoot at you in whatever direction you happen to be in at the
time. I got into a doorway to get out of the way of bullets, and lo and behold
the cops continued to fire at me even though it wasn’t doing anything more than
hitting the brick wall next to me. This is only one example out of a few that I
can toss out, like cops jumping into a river after you and swimming in one place
or driving their cars into concrete barricaldes over and over and over again to
try and get on the same side of the road as you on a divided highway. While I’d
like to say that these were isolated incidents, they are the norm rather than
the exception.

The graphics provide another
major issue to Driver 3 rather than helping it out due to the fact that the game
feels as though it was rushed to production, as it both looks and feels very
rough and unpolished. There are literally a ton of collision-detection problems
I could go into detail about, like floating cars and times where Tanner gets
stuck in the air doing a Karate Kid crane stance while trying to jump over
something, but these kinds of things happen constantly. There is also a horrible
drawn-in rate where things pop out of thin air not too far away, and also some
bizarre random happenings that go on too, like Tanner getting hit for half
damage while he’s just walking idly in an area where no people can be found.

Soundwise, there were some
really good voiceovers from people like Ving Rhames, but sadly that’s probably
not going to do much to save the game from being another $50 frustration or
trade-in fodder. The music to Driver 3 also doesn’t do much more than provide
some background tunes … and while vehicles tended to have some different sounds
depending on what they were, all of them just sort of had an engine droning
noise that seemed very late 90’s to me personally.

Overall, I really enjoyed
the first Driver, thought the second one was OK, but really thought that the
third one is still taking the series in the wrong direction due to it’s
repetitive mission based gameplay and truckload of technical problems. If you
really have to try this title out, I highly suggest giving it a rental. As for
buying it, only a die hard Driver fan should apply … but this one may be less
than what was expected even for them as well. My recommendation? Play GTA some
more until San Andreas comes out. It beats the $50 lost alternative.

Gameplay: 5.9
The character
controls are pretty standard to both third person and FPS titles, but they are
very stiff and slow. Not the kind of thing you want in a shoot-out or high-speed
chase. Also, the gameplay in the story mode is mission after mission after
mission, which gets repetitive after a period of time (especially when you have
to try do a mission more than 5 times), and the AI is definitely below average.

Graphics: 6.0
Miami from the
top of a building looks pretty sharp in the night, but it’s not enough to save
it from all the other things wrong with it. There are collision-detection
problems everywhere, and the pop-up and draw-in distance is horrible. There are
also random problems, like losing life for no reason, and the overall look to
the game is almost into original PS style in some places (four sided sprite
trees … yuk!)

Sound: 6.1
The voice acting
was done well, and was entertaining, but the music really didn’t do much more
than add in some background noise. Also, the cars sounded very droning, although
they had their own unique sounds, and there was a little more that could have
been done here.

Difficulty: Hard
Due to driving
cars that handle like dump trucks, chases can be a real pain. Also, the missions
that are timed were repeated constantly, usually due to not having a clear
notion on what to do next, so be ready for some do-overs.

Concept: 6.0
Driver was a
great game, but unfortunately we seem to be headed the wrong direction with the
third installment. I was really hoping for more, but ultimately this feels
rushed and unfinished.

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 5.9
Well, I would
love to recommend this title, but I would even warn Driver fanatics to be
careful if you are thinking about buying this game. Wait until it goes used and
hits the $20 or under mark or just rent it for a weekend, since after a few
hours you may find it to be too frustrating and not really worth your while.