Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action (
More info?)
On 24 Apr 2005 00:05:39 GMT, Knight37 <knight37m@email.com> wrote:
>Anyone played this game? Is it anything similar to GTA3/VC or what? I
>remember the first Driver game, it was pretty much a straight driving sim
>but the backstory was pretty cool. How does the third game change things?
I played it for only about 30 minutes, but here's my impressions of
the game:
First of all, it's probably one of the ugliest new games I've seen in
a while. It just doesn't look good. Low-res textures, unimpressive
lighting, stiff animation and dull looking level design. The car
models had a decent number of polygons, and the damage deformations
were good looking, but compared to Mafia -or even GTA3- the game is
deficient.
The game has two different -and completely seperate- gameplay modes.
The first is a mission-based campaign where you follow the story of an
undercover cop (or something like that; as I said I only could stomach
the game for the first 30 minutes). The missions are very
straightforward - and very, very short. For example, mission 1 was
"drive to police station and run through a brief shooting range".
Mission 2: follow cop cars to scene of crime for (about 2 minutes).
Later missions didn't get any longer, nor did they get anymore
complex.
The other game mode was a open driving mode, where you could zoom
around the city wherever you cared to go. However, there really wasn't
much to do, that I could see. No "taxi cab" mode, or "ambulance" mode
or even races against other drivers, or whatnot. Just zoom around and
maybe attract the attention of braindead cops.
Because of the mission based structure of the campaign mode, you don't
really have the option of zipping about where you will; get too far
away from your goal and it's mission over. So if you want to explore,
you have to quit the campaign and start a new session in explore mode.
The driving is very loose and arcadey; the cars are overpowered muscle
cars. It's gameplay that's really suited more for arcadey track racers
than for racing through tight, crowded city streets. Still, it isn't
too bad. The run-n-gun bits -where you are on foot- are far less
entertaining, no thanks largely to the braindead AI that just stands
around and lets you shoot at them.
The game features some big-name talent, but the voice-acting is
supremely sub-par. The characters seemed flat and failed to resonate.
Then there are the little annoyances, the inability to remap controls
in-game (much less change video or audio settings).
It may be that the game picks up significantly after the bit I played,
but my first impression was anything but favorable. It looked and
played like an inferior copy of GTA3, failing to take advantage of any
of the innovations in graphics technology, AI or gameplay. I intend on
avoiding this turkey.
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