Though driving is the core of DPL, guns are pretty important too - especially if you need to take out another car. It's quite a skill to lock-on and shoot the crap out of a fleeing target while weaving through traffic and avoiding the advances of a couple of cops. But targeting works well, so you don't spend most of your time embedded into the back of a bus. In spite of your honed driving skills, wrecking a car is inevitable.
You're forced out of your wrecker and made to leg it over to the nearest vehicle; car, bus, firetruck motor bike - if it drives, it's yours.
Despite the criticism Driv3r got for poor on-foot handling, it doesn't seem to have been addressed very well. The biggest fault being with the camera, which doesn't follow you around automatically, looking over your shoulder. When you get out of a car, the camera stays pointed in the direction that the car was pointing. This leaves you running into the unknown, struggling to adjust the camera while dealing with Police or enemies - which is a real issue. All too often you'll try to target an enemy that appears to be right in front of you, but the lock gets placed on something behind. You can get around this by holding down the lock button as you run, which fixes the camera into a much more predictable over-the-shoulder position, but you have to have the weapon drawn. Indeed, this is the only way to make your way around the armed, on-foot jobs, as it allows you to side-step or, when locked on a target, strafe while attacking. The almost-first-person "marksman" mode, which zooms in tightly behind the player, would be the better option for the close quarters corridor fights ... were it not for the inability to move around easily. Switching between the different options is the only solution, making your time on-foot quite a bit of leg work. To compound this, if you find yourself out of a car and far from a road, you'll be in for a long, boring jog. DPL is without the obvious sprint option, so you're left to plod around looking for your next ride to somewhere interesting.
A bit on the side
Dotted around the city are huge spinning stars which, if you collect enough, unlock bonuses such as increased health or ammo. They're a minor feature that are only likely to be pursued by the perfectionist. Other side-jobs offer slightly more engaging distractions. Each of Ray's garages is situated next to a race track, where you can compete for cash; Pick up a marked cab and play taxi driver; Become a hitman; Take part in street races; Steal cars to order; Collect a loan shark's debts; Beat the clock on a checkpoint race; Goad the police into a getaway survival. This last one is worth lingering with. Here at SPOnG, many hours were spent playing pass-the-controller on Driver's original Survival mini-game. DPL's Getaway Survival replaces this, but it's just way too easy. The whole point of Survival was to see how long you could last against supercops, but now you have to evade the Police in a fixed time. Once you've got a sub machine gun, you just need to do a quick 180 degree handbrake turn and empty a clip into the oncoming copper - bang! No more cop car. Also, accessing these new mini-games is pretty laborious. In the original Driver you could jump straight into any of the mini-games from the main menu, but with DPL you have to ride around the city looking for these challenges. Some are marked on the map, some are not, which is frustrating when you just want a quick blast at a Getaway Survival or Taxi.
With all of the side-jobs you can earn cash, but it's a lot of work for little return - and that's money you could easily lose if you're stupid enough to get yourself killed, as your account is partly drained while you're reset back to the start of the job or your garage. It's a good thing then that the gameplay is well balanced. The only time you'll find health packs is during on-foot jobs or back at the garage. Nevertheless, only the most reckless will find themselves sprawled on the pavement, accepting the toughest of jobs. Once you're job is done, you'll be reinvigorated.
Interest density
Initially, DPL's visuals seem bland, sterile even. We couldn't put our finger on the problem, because there's an admirable amount of road and pedestrian traffic. The game also offers an impressive draw distance and level of detail - being able to see the entire skyline of Manhattan from the hills of New Jersey, yet experience no serious pop-up is an incredible feat on the aging PS2. However, those first streets seem flat, expansive and bordered by boxy, uninteresting buildings. Manhattan seems no better; block after block of bland skyscrapers and tenements punctuated only with the occasional landmark building - Flat Iron, Empire State, Chrysler - but you can't identify these because their characteristic architecture is out of sight, high above the streets, casting only a constantly shifting shadow as the sun crosses the sky.
This is the danger with setting a game in a real-world location. Let's call it "low interest density". If you look at past attempts to accurately map real cities - Getaway or True Crime - they've all been beset with miles of uninteresting streets, and it's possibly one of the reasons why GTA has reigned king for so long. GTA has taken real cities and rendered them down to a landmark syrup, juicing them for their most interesting street and features and setting them apart by just a few blocks of mediocrity.
Is DPL doomed to fail due to "low interest density"? Well, a little. You see, it becomes clear that the choice of DPL's starting points and initial jobs haven't done the game any favours. Urban streets are dull and repetitive, but if you take a five minute drive you can find yourself marvelling at an excellent rendition of the World's Fair ground (think of the finale in Men in Black, if you're not familiar). Go a little further and there's an excellent recreation of Coney Island's decrepit fun fair. Heading over to New Jersey, Moonachie's storage tanks, towering chimneys, container yards and networks of pipelines present a convincingly busy, industrious area. You can smell the wealth in Englewood, with its mansions set back in leafy seclusion. With only an approximation of the streets of this vast area, you get less hung up on learning the exact geography in a bland world, and more time getting from A to B, blazing though the uninspiring areas and into the more interesting zones. It's
a real pity that the repetitive urban areas were chosen as starting points, as they look more last-gen than next, but then you're hardly likely to find a garage in the middle of Flushing Meadows.
Aural gratification
We can't sign off without mentioning the audio for the game. Generally, the engine sounds get a bit irritating, though some of the cars with big V8s sounds beautifully throaty. There's a nice ambient street noise keeping the city alive, with that ever present, far off wail of sirens to keep you company. Surround effects have been worked into the mix very well, with traffic audibly "whooshing" past as you fly through busy streets. Then, of course, there's the great sound track to ease you through those long drives. In '78 you're accompaniment includes Average White Band, David Bowie, Blondie, Marvin Gaye, Iggy Pop, Funkadelic and Parliament. Kaiser Chiefs, The Roots, Secret Machines and The Dead 60's are among the tracks backing your 2006 activities.
SPOnG score: B
Driver: Parallel Lines is a fabulous reinvention of the original formula. The on-foot controls could have done with a bit more polishing, though you can work around them. Most importantly, the driving is right where it should be - handling great and the primary focus of the game. It doesn't have the "I wonder if I can..." playground feel of GTA, but the visuals are way ahead of the Rockstar perennial, and Driver's missions are arguably more engaging. If Driver 5 is as big an improvement over this as this is over Driv3r - we can hardly wait!
Despite the criticism Driv3r got for poor on-foot handling, it doesn't seem to have been addressed very well. The biggest fault being with the camera, which doesn't follow you around automatically, looking over your shoulder. When you get out of a car, the camera stays pointed in the direction that the car was pointing. This leaves you running into the unknown, struggling to adjust the camera while dealing with Police or enemies - which is a real issue. All too often you'll try to target an enemy that appears to be right in front of you, but the lock gets placed on something behind. You can get around this by holding down the lock button as you run, which fixes the camera into a much more predictable over-the-shoulder position, but you have to have the weapon drawn. Indeed, this is the only way to make your way around the armed, on-foot jobs, as it allows you to side-step or, when locked on a target, strafe while attacking. The almost-first-person "marksman" mode, which zooms in tightly behind the player, would be the better option for the close quarters corridor fights ... were it not for the inability to move around easily. Switching between the different options is the only solution, making your time on-foot quite a bit of leg work. To compound this, if you find yourself out of a car and far from a road, you'll be in for a long, boring jog. DPL is without the obvious sprint option, so you're left to plod around looking for your next ride to somewhere interesting.
A bit on the side
With all of the side-jobs you can earn cash, but it's a lot of work for little return - and that's money you could easily lose if you're stupid enough to get yourself killed, as your account is partly drained while you're reset back to the start of the job or your garage. It's a good thing then that the gameplay is well balanced. The only time you'll find health packs is during on-foot jobs or back at the garage. Nevertheless, only the most reckless will find themselves sprawled on the pavement, accepting the toughest of jobs. Once you're job is done, you'll be reinvigorated.
Interest density
Is DPL doomed to fail due to "low interest density"? Well, a little. You see, it becomes clear that the choice of DPL's starting points and initial jobs haven't done the game any favours. Urban streets are dull and repetitive, but if you take a five minute drive you can find yourself marvelling at an excellent rendition of the World's Fair ground (think of the finale in Men in Black, if you're not familiar). Go a little further and there's an excellent recreation of Coney Island's decrepit fun fair. Heading over to New Jersey, Moonachie's storage tanks, towering chimneys, container yards and networks of pipelines present a convincingly busy, industrious area. You can smell the wealth in Englewood, with its mansions set back in leafy seclusion. With only an approximation of the streets of this vast area, you get less hung up on learning the exact geography in a bland world, and more time getting from A to B, blazing though the uninspiring areas and into the more interesting zones. It's
Aural gratification
We can't sign off without mentioning the audio for the game. Generally, the engine sounds get a bit irritating, though some of the cars with big V8s sounds beautifully throaty. There's a nice ambient street noise keeping the city alive, with that ever present, far off wail of sirens to keep you company. Surround effects have been worked into the mix very well, with traffic audibly "whooshing" past as you fly through busy streets. Then, of course, there's the great sound track to ease you through those long drives. In '78 you're accompaniment includes Average White Band, David Bowie, Blondie, Marvin Gaye, Iggy Pop, Funkadelic and Parliament. Kaiser Chiefs, The Roots, Secret Machines and The Dead 60's are among the tracks backing your 2006 activities.
SPOnG score: B
Driver: Parallel Lines is a fabulous reinvention of the original formula. The on-foot controls could have done with a bit more polishing, though you can work around them. Most importantly, the driving is right where it should be - handling great and the primary focus of the game. It doesn't have the "I wonder if I can..." playground feel of GTA, but the visuals are way ahead of the Rockstar perennial, and Driver's missions are arguably more engaging. If Driver 5 is as big an improvement over this as this is over Driv3r - we can hardly wait!