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Driv3r
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Xbox - Reflections - Action/Driving - M - 1 Player
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| The prevalent redeeming quality in games that share the same genre as Driv3r is usually the living, breathing world that you are placed right in the middle of. Traffic, stop lights, pedestrians--it looks like a modern replica of any random city near you. Upon booting up Driv3r, however, I was seemingly dropped into the middle of a Twilight Zone episode instead. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Traffic and pedestrians failed to abide by traffic laws, lights, or logic. In fact, I found several cars waiting at a green light, then proceeding once the light turned red. The traffic AI displays no noticeable adjustment if your police sirens are on. Cars would come to a screeching hault at intersections, then begin to slowly go in reverse. The first time I encountered an intersection, I reproduced the same situation first hand, as there is no complete brake. I came to a stop, but since the brake serves as a reverse, I too began to slowly back up. Pedestrians sport some of the worst AI I’ve seen in a while, and my fellow police officers were perhaps even more inept. On the second mission of the game, I had to drive to a specific spot, accompanied by a few other officers. Twice I was rammed by my boys in blue for no apparent reason. There weren’t any brainless pedestrians wandering through the road that needed dodging. Perhaps they were suffering from the same horrible camera I was. With said camera, you get two choices. The default being a typical 3rd person, behind the car view. However, the camera is entirely too low and you only get a dozen or so pixels between the top of your car and the horizon--not near enough room to properly see what’s ahead of you. Your only other alternative is another awfully low view, this time in first person, as if the camera was set in the grill of your car. Needless to say, neither work and both are frustrating at best. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Sadly, the on-foot action isn’t any better. Tanner’s movements feel incredibly stiff and it doesn’t help matters that aiming consists of a reticle that simply mimics your on-foot movement, thus resulting in onscreen action that is anything but action-packed. It’s dull. Very dull. In fact, it’s boring as hell. Gunfights are so poorly executed that the action is almost comical. These clashes usually consist of you running up to your foe until your pathetic reticle is spot on and blasting him six or seven times while he just stands there and does the same. In the Driv3r world it takes, at minimum, a half dozen gunshots to bring a man down. The structure the missions are set up in is pretty linear, so you get to follow mission after tedious mission of this atrocious gameplay. Of course you don’t always have to proceed to the next mission, but there’s not a lot to do to keep you occupied in the optional, non-linear portion of the game. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The audio is what you’d come to imagine in a game of this caliber. The voice acting is basic, nothing great, yet nothing laughable. The game does sport some big names, however, most notably Ving Rhames and Michael Madsen, yet this really doesn’t amend the boring dialog or the lackluster plot. Surprisingly, Driv3r supports custom soundtracks. Unfortunately, every time you start a new segment (which is often) your soundtrack will restart from the beginning. This means you will hear the first song of your playlist constantly and the following tracks will be heard far less often, if even at all. This aspect just baffles me more than anything; just another feature out of many that shows how little Reflections really cared about the end product. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| There are a plethora of other problems with Driv3r, but I feel it’s just moot to continue. I don’t consider myself a fan of the series, so I came into this experience expecting little. What I got in return was a slap in the face--I can only imagine what the real fans of the series felt. The game insults its audience at every turn and is horribly flawed in just about every aspect. There is no need to really say any more than that. Driv3r is easily the worst game I have played this year. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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