DRIV3R is unfortunately taken down by all the hype that surrounded it. And was beaten to death. Or mamed, whatever...

User Rating: 6.8 | DRIV3R XBOX
By edubuccaneer | Review Date:
DRIV3R was a game that got so much hype that people started to love it and say how good it was even before seeing it in action. Followed by a elaborate trailer made by the Scott brothers, the tale of Tanner got even more attention. Add to that a Hollywood cast, and you got yourself a game, right?

Uh, no.

The game takes the factor that made people cringe in Driver 2 and extrapolates it: now adding to the fact that you can get out of your can, you can shoot people! And it doesn't control very well! You'll be reloading your game on foot a bunch of times before figuring that the enemies are so dumb and expect frontal attacks, so you'll duck and shoot them while hidden from their badly-programed sights... a great series that is called DRIVER now turns into a GTA wannabe at even manages to ruin the driving portions.

Yep, following the bad on foot action, the in-car gameplay is not an improvement. You'll have nerve-twiching controls that follow your very involuntary finger movements from breathing and turn your vehicle around in a jiff. Add the fact that some obstacles, like traffic signs will stop your car almost instantaneously. And like Driver 2, but taken to a whole need level, any mistakes in a chase will ruin it. Even following friendly cars becomes a nightmare if there is too much traffic.

Graphics-wise, the saving point of the game are the good car models and environments that look kind of good, but not so up close. The soundtrack is forgettable and the voice acting is OK, nothing stellar, even with the VIP crew. VIPs do sound like normal people...

As for the story, the game follows Tanner's attempt to infiltrate a car-stealing crew that is terrorizing town. Nothing huge, but nothing too weak either.

And the game got ported over to the PC almost a whole year after the console versions. So you'd expect to see a whole slew of fixes and improvements. Well, sorry, you ain't getting none, in fact, the game is worse on the PC, because of all compability issues and even more bugs...

DRIV3R is worthy of a rental or a trial by demo. If you followed previous stories and are interested to see what old Tanny is doing to earn his bucks, go ahead and check it out, but you won't stay too long, I'm afraid.

Thanks for reading!

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