One of my favorite things to do with my friends a few years ago of course was to play PS on weekends, staying up late and going through any number of driving, sports, or action titles throughout a Saturday and Sunday evening. One of these that I particularly enjoyed was the original Driver, as I remember friends and I would constantly try to see who could use the glitches the best and do things like shoot our own cars or cop cars 400 feet in the air and things like that after head on collisions. Well, here we are again, getting another installment to the Driver series with Driver 3, but unfortunately I think it’s safe to say that this version has definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Driv3r once again stars it’s leading man named Tanner as he this time goes undercover to bust a ring of car thieves looking to ship some high-end vehicles overseas. Basically, you accomplish this by going through a series of pretty well-acted cutscenes and some missions (which I’ll get to in a second) which will have Tanner doing things undercover both in and out of his vehicle. Ultimately, think GTA III with you playing as an undercover cop versus a bad guy.

There are three modes with this installment of Driv3r as well, most of which fans of the series will be familiar with. The main one is the story mode, which progresses you further into the game. The next one is called “Take a Ride,” in which you can just drive around to see the sights, carjack people, and evade the police (again, think GTA III). Lastly, you can also run a series of challenges with things like checkpoint races for fun and some new unlockable stuff. In addition, the director mode is present in here as well, so players can once again take replays of missions or their “Take a Ride” footage and change camera angles and add effects to make their own little action movies.

The controls to Driv3r are pretty standard to similar games in the same vein, but ultimately also become it’s first big downfall. While the in car controls use the right stick to accelerate and brake and the left to steer (or you can use the X and circle buttons) and the out-of-car controls mirror FPS controls, everything feels very stiff and sluggish. You can switch between third- and first-person modes during the game, but this won’t do anything to really speed it up or make it seem like it runs better. I thought I had some issues with speed in third person, but then jumped to FPS and found it to be equally as slow. This wasn’t only on foot, but also in the vehicles as well as even top of the line sports cars handled like I was driving a yacht out of water and down the expressway. 

Another issue here is in the AI, for both good and bad guys alike. While doing one mission where I had to go into a hotel and search for a car that was hidden in a garage for example, there were enemies on every floor of the building that I ran across. Just to tell you what you will experience, here’s a typical scenario for you … get out of the elevator, see bad guy, bad guy will make no moves towards you at all. Shoot him three times before he draws his weapon, he’s dead before he can get a shot off. Anyways, for me personally it made the game pretty dull overall when you run into this kind of stuff.

As for the car chases … the cops are a little more relentless while in pursuit of you, but once they get out of the car they get about as stupid as the bad guys that I just talked about. Anytime a weapon is drawn, they won’t really go after you … but instead will stand idly and shoot at you in whatever direction you happen to be in at the time. I got into a doorway to get out of the way of bullets, and lo and behold the cops continued to fire at me even though it wasn’t doing anything more than hitting the brick wall next to me. This is only one example out of a few that I can toss out, like cops jumping into a river after you and swimming in one place or driving their cars into concrete barricaldes over and over and over again to try and get on the same side of the road as you on a divided highway. While I’d like to say that these were isolated incidents, they are the norm rather than the exception.

The graphics provide another major issue to Driver 3 rather than helping it out due to the fact that the game feels as though it was rushed to production, as it both looks and feels very rough and unpolished. There are literally a ton of collision-detection problems I could go into detail about, like floating cars and times where Tanner gets stuck in the air doing a Karate Kid crane stance while trying to jump over something, but these kinds of things happen constantly. There is also a horrible drawn-in rate where things pop out of thin air not too far away, and also some bizarre random happenings that go on too, like Tanner getting hit for half damage while he’s just walking idly in an area where no people can be found.

Soundwise, there were some really good voiceovers from people like Ving Rhames, but sadly that’s probably not going to do much to save the game from being another $50 frustration or trade-in fodder. The music to Driver 3 also doesn’t do much more than provide some background tunes … and while vehicles tended to have some different sounds depending on what they were, all of them just sort of had an engine droning noise that seemed very late 90’s to me personally.

Overall, I really enjoyed the first Driver, thought the second one was OK, but really thought that the third one is still taking the series in the wrong direction due to it’s repetitive mission based gameplay and truckload of technical problems. If you really have to try this title out, I highly suggest giving it a rental. As for buying it, only a die hard Driver fan should apply … but this one may be less than what was expected even for them as well. My recommendation? Play GTA some more until San Andreas comes out. It beats the $50 lost alternative.

Gameplay: 5.9
The character controls are pretty standard to both third person and FPS titles, but they are very stiff and slow. Not the kind of thing you want in a shoot-out or high-speed chase. Also, the gameplay in the story mode is mission after mission after mission, which gets repetitive after a period of time (especially when you have to try do a mission more than 5 times), and the AI is definitely below average.

Graphics: 6.0
Miami from the top of a building looks pretty sharp in the night, but it’s not enough to save it from all the other things wrong with it. There are collision-detection problems everywhere, and the pop-up and draw-in distance is horrible. There are also random problems, like losing life for no reason, and the overall look to the game is almost into original PS style in some places (four sided sprite trees … yuk!)

Sound: 6.1
The voice acting was done well, and was entertaining, but the music really didn’t do much more than add in some background noise. Also, the cars sounded very droning, although they had their own unique sounds, and there was a little more that could have been done here.

Difficulty: Hard
Due to driving cars that handle like dump trucks, chases can be a real pain. Also, the missions that are timed were repeated constantly, usually due to not having a clear notion on what to do next, so be ready for some do-overs.

Concept: 6.0
Driver was a great game, but unfortunately we seem to be headed the wrong direction with the third installment. I was really hoping for more, but ultimately this feels rushed and unfinished.

Multiplayer: N/A

Overall: 5.9
Well, I would love to recommend this title, but I would even warn Driver fanatics to be careful if you are thinking about buying this game. Wait until it goes used and hits the $20 or under mark or just rent it for a weekend, since after a few hours you may find it to be too frustrating and not really worth your while.