Driver: Parallel Lines puts the series back in good form but has had to borrow heavily from GTA to get there...
Unfortunately, one of the biggest bombs in the PS2 generation was dropped in June 2004. Driv3r was released and sadly failed to live up to the massive expectations. The vehicle handling was rusty, the gun combat felt like an FPS in a third person view (combat handled like a greased up crab strafing all over the place), the enemies were too harsh, there were no airiel vehicles and the boats that were included handled terribly. Missions were unbalanced and too difficult and the graphics seemed to have dropped in quality with loads of pop-up and some very bad texture work by Reflections. Driver was as good as dead.
Now in 2006, Driver has made a return to form in Driver: Parallel Lines with the help of it's biggest enemy out there - Grand Theft Auto. You play as The Kid; a wheelman in 1970's New York who has joined a group of cons and a corrupt police officer who have a huge plan. By kidnapping a head member of a Mexican gang the gang plan to blackmail their way to glory but as usual things become more messed up than a toilet after Indian food. The people who TK called 'friends' set him up and pin the blame on him for the kidnapping. They gun him down along with the only guy in the group who wasn't in on the plan and then leave TK for dead. However, TK survives and is thrown in jail for 28 years. When he finally emerges in 2006, he is not a kid anymore. He is wiser and is out for bloody revenge against the people who did this to him.
Driver: PL seems to have taken the series back to it's roots gameplay-wise. The cars handle very well this time round with realism playing a big factor. Physics are top notch and when you go up and down the hills, it feels quite heavy in a realistic manner. The cars handle well but what about the dreaded bikes in Driv3r? They return but this time have been massively overhauled. You no longer fall off the bike at the slightest bounce but that's not to say that the bikes have GTA-like levels of perfection though. They are too twitchy and you can fail a few missions if your not careful - an annoyance that sadly remains in Parallel Lines.
In the switch to 2006, cars handle much tighter and there are a lot more sports cars on the streets making chases faster and generally more exciting. I can complain about a few car-related things though. First of all, the term continuity obviously doesn't appear in the Reflections dictionary since the 'heat' on cars from the 1970's is still there in 06! I mean talk about holding a grudge! Another thing is that everything is a bit too 70's or 00's. Guns are too 70's detective show (freakin' huge revolvers etc.) and cars look like they're from the early 70's or even late 60's. Also, It's all a bit too funky and disco-electro seeing as the 1980's are arriving in about 2 years time. Guns in 06 are too futuristic and alternative, with weapons like experimental shotguns being used openly by the cops and cars that resemble concept models being used in poor NYC areas. It's slightly strange but is just a minor thing.
Shooting has thankfully been changed to a user friendly lock on and a manual free aim system is in place just like in the Rockstar boys latest effort San Andreas. Sometimes it's erratic though and locks onto a pedestrian instead of the SWAT team member who is shooting at you 5 feet away! It is an improvement though and only 20% or so of the game's missions are taken up by shooting so you shouldn't worry if you don't like it.
Speaking of missions, Reflections have altered the way you complete them. In usual Driver fashion, missions are sprung on you one after another and there is a free roam option from the start menu. Reflections have now adopted a free-roaming style in a whole city which is quite big (I reckon it's about 3/8 the size of San Andreas) and has a lot of detail in it. You drive to each mission one by one in any order you like and can take on side missions like finding 50 stars (like GTA's packages) in each time period (that's 100 stars to find altogether) and completing a few dozen odd jobs like races, hitman missions, supply and demand, loan shark and many more. Or you can spend ages roaming the city looking at landmarks like the Twin Towers which are in 1978 but cleverly dissapear in the era change. Many, many things change in 2006 (it almost feels like an entirely new city) - even the colour tint changes from orange to blue.
Because of the use of colour and subtle details, Driver: PL has a superb atmosphere. The graphics aren't the best around but they run well with minimal slowdown, a great draw distance and minimal pop-up that plagued Driv3r. Cars are very detailed and character models are mostly well done. Each model comes with their own dress and hairstyle combo and the environment looks lush with nicely done trees and pleasantly shiny skyscrapers. Also little effects like sun glare and the newspapers that blow into the air under the car are neatly implemented. Yet some issues from Driv3r still remain in Parallel Lines. There are some sloppy textures in the game like solid green blocks of grass that fit on top of each other to make a hill. They don't fit exactly and so the texture bounces on and off of the framework, revealing the empty space behind it. The same goes for some buildings which just show that the developers made one block of windowed housing and repeated it 10 times down a street to make a section of housing; but generally, Parallel Lines looks and runs great on PS2. It may not be as smooth as on Xbox but it gets things done.
Sound has been done very well in Parallel Lines. The 1970's portion of the soundtrack couldn't be better with David Bowie's Suffregate City, Express Yourself by Charles Wright, Blondie, The Damned and many more 1970's classics. It feels like one big compilation of the best of the 70's instead of the crappy 'It's a 70's Disco!' CD's you get free in the newspapers that feature one hit wonders (if wonders is what you call some dire, banshee screeching-like trash that should never have left the 70's in the first place). Fast forward your 8-Track to 2006 and the soundtrack is still quite good, but nowhere near the perfection the 70's were. Here, we have whining emo, gurning bands from the UK, the NYC based rock band called the Yeah Yeah Yeah's (who made an exclusive song for the game), some hardcore East coast rap as well as the resurrection of some old dinosaurs like Grandmaster Flash (God only knows what happened to the Furious Five). Dialogue is well acted and fits in with the jive -urkey slang frame of mind successfully. I'm happy that the PS2 version has good quality sound which is sharply produced unlike some other games were it's muffled due to the 'limited' PS2 capabilities.
Overall, Driver: Parallel Lines is a great game but it reaks of rental all over it. At under 20 hours for the main story and with some fairly boring side missions (about 10 is the most people could suffer through), it's not exactly a GTA style affair. It lacks the bonus exploration factor and fun little bits to explore and do but has a compelling story to make up for. If you can brave the slow start you will find a solid game here. I'm just glad to see the series is back on track after number 3, even if it is a bit GTA....