Reflections have done well in the latest instalment of the Driver franchise. The horrible emptiness of Driv3r is gone and we now have a huge sprawling New York, with all areas unlocked from the get go. And it’s a busy New York, with plenty of cars around to make driving fast an art form – not too difficult, but dangerous enough to keep you focussed.
The graphics are awesome – especially for the PS2 (I played the XBox version of Driv3r), and distance and (lack of) pop up is great. The number of cars on screen doesn’t seem to slow the frame rate either.
The game is split into two parts – New York in 1978 and 2006. Whilst this may sound like a cop out, I’m looking forward to the 2006 stage to see just how New York has changed, and what cars are available!
The missions are semi run of the mill – and variable in their challenges – but the best thing about driver is the driving – the car handles like it should – 1970’s Hollywood Chase scene style, handbrake turns, sliding round corners, it’s just fun to drive at speed!
Of course the game isn’t perfect – the missions can get frustrating at times, and there’s the weird glitches that you expect in a game of this scope. Some of the glitches are funny, like the time I was driving past a bus and it suddenly changed into a car, some are annoying, like one of the early missions on a bike – if you flip the bike and fall off – the bike tends to land upside down with the motor still running, and you CAN’T get back on it. And then there’s the frustrating, with a mission re-start point (again with the bike) and the bike keeps moving – one time you start and its beside you, the next it’s behind the container, etc, etc.
But all in all it’s a great game, and sets the series up for it’s first foray into the next gen consols – hopefully next year sometime!
You have been warned…Driver Parallel Lines is rated R18, probably due to the amount of violence that you can create, and the language used. But having said that, if you play the game properly (and don’t use the cheats) it’s not a game that encourages you to use violence outside of the main story line. If you break the law, the cops will come after you – sure you can shoot them, but then you’ll get a police helicopter and eventually SWAT coming down on ya, and that’s something that’s gonna ruin your day.
Another thing is running down pedestrians – in old Driver games, the pedestrians would have super powers that enabled them to dive out of the way of a car doing over 100KPH. Not this time – this time you get to run them over – but before you think that the footpath is a quick way to avoid traffic – running pedestrians over will slow you down – every time you hit one, you loose speed. This is kind of cool in a way (and a very bizarre way I know) as it gives some weight to them being real people (I know, I’ve gone crazy now) and forces you to think about the consequences of your actions (even if the only thought is loss of speed).
Of course some will argue that I shouldn’t be playing violent games, but do I play games like Driver because they are violent, or because they offer something unique to gaming – open ended play? And does open-ended game play justify the violence? I’m not gonna answer that.
Gus Van Sant has a penchant for labourious, slow moving but peculiarly captivating movies. His latest offering based around the last few hours of Nirvana’s front man Kurt Cobain's last few hours takes the cake though. It has all the trade marks of a Van Sant movie – slow moving, weird camera angles and lengthy scenes where nothing happens. 
