Driver®: Parallel Lines

Driver: Parallel Lines has been accepted as the black sheep of the Driver series. While that's not necessarily a bad name, it does mean many fans of previous Driver games were put off by the new gameplay mechanics and lost features D:PL brought to the table. But the core mechanics are here: Parallel Lines offers the best car chases you will find in any driving game at a difficulty reserved for the hardest of the hardcore. AI cars pursue you ferociously at suicidal speeds in the middle of cluttered New York traffic, and making the perfect escape will require pulling some impressive maneuvers that are both fun to execute and just look really cool. Sweetening the deal to the cinematic car chases is a little feature that lets you switch the camera view to a slo-mo cinematic shot of your car in motion at the press of a button, so you can see that narrow miss or epic crash as though you were watching a true 70's action flick. As great as the chases are, however, the game falls short on its new additions to the Driver formula. The city, though impressive in scale and destructible items, just wasn't made to be seen at less than 60 MPH. Pedestrians are lifeless when not dodging traffic and there are no little behavioral gimmicks to make you feel as though you're walking through a real city. Gun combat has been converted from Driv3r's FPS control to a clumsy targeting system, which leaves series fans scratching their heads since Driv3r's shooting worked just fine. The biggest loss is the removal of the Moviemaker mode. Previous Driver games would quite literally let you make small movies out of your adventures with cinematic techniques such as slo-mo, motion blur, camera tracking and even tripod cams that could be placed anywhere. The feature is completely gone in Parallel Lines, which is a true shame since there are some amazing moments in the course of a chase that you may want to watch from different angles, not to mention the moviemaker mode gave previous games loads of replay value to movie buffs. Parallel Lines may not be the best entry in the Driver series. But it's still a Driver game, and as long as it's the only one that GOG has, it should not be missed by anybody with a penchant for white-knuckle car chases and 70's aesthetics.

Before there was GTA 3 there was 'Driver'. Driver 1 and 2 started the whole 3d sand-box driving genre. They were classics that GTA 3 borrowed heavily from, and yes, GTA 3 did do it better. I have a love / hate relationship with the driver series. I never played 1 or 2 but i started with Driv3r (Driver 3). On first play it was a startling game. Fantastic graphics and ultra realistic handling. It looked beautiful and had a revolutionary replay mode that let you make your own movies from gameplay. I thought 'wow this is going to change games' and for a while i was hooked. Much like the GTA series most of the fun was cruising the streets and having gunfights with cops before stealing a car and trying to escape. But then the cracks started to show. Bugs and glitches and halfway through the game it got insanely hard and unfair on the player. To be honest it frustrated me so much i snapped the disc so that the game wouldnt be able to frustrate some poor guy just like me. Trouble was the game was great until halfway through and it got impossible. Any little obstacle no matter how small would make you crash and automatically lose. It was after this that 'Driver Parralles Lines' was released. Everything was different from the previous Driv3r. It turns out that i wasnt the only one the was frustrated by the previous game. Sure this version of Driver was less frustrating, but im not sure it was an improvement. As flawed as Driv3r was, its core gameplay was amazing. Driver-Parrallel lines now plays exactly like the GTA 3 series and felt dumbed down in comparason. All of the on-foot gunplay now used a lock-on auto target like GTA 3 and you could tell that the game engine was totally different. That being said, the game is actually very good. the story is engaging and the driving control is done well. The Cars handle fine and the environments all look good ( of a Saints Row / GTA standard) The 1970's setting is a big draw here and the sound-track is fantastic. This game is going to suffer from comparisons with the GTA series. It's a GTA clone, but a good one. It's worth the $9 price tag and then some. Yes the GTA series is better but there is something about this game that is addictive. Compared to a game like GTA Vice City etc this game would rate maybe a three out of Five stars but i think that would be unfair. Without comparing it to the GTA series, Driver-Parrallel lines deserves a 4 out of 5 stars. Sure you'd probably find me in the GTA / Saints Row universe before going to Driver, but then why do i really want to play this game again?....it's worth more than 9 bucks you cheap bastard so give it a shot and decide for yourself.

I'd forgotten just how frustrating this game is! The time limits put on just about every mission makes it almost impossible to complete them. Which means you spend hours replaying the same mission over and over again until you can MAYBE finish it, and then you just get to start another nearly impossible mission to complete! Stay away from this one unless you really enjoy being frustrated to the point of throwing your computer across the room!

I lost track of how often this game crashed in Windows 7 (not to mention the fact that I first had to download an old version of DirectX just to get it to run at all). The on-foot combat system is horrid, and the view joystick when on foot has the two axes turn in different directions - yikes! Plus, I normally suck at most games, but I finished the main story line (which wasn't all that bad) in half a weekend. Maybe if this game were half-price it would be a good value... I think the original Driver games is still better than this one. Sure does look, pretty, though.