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Driver was released for the PlayStation more than a year ago now, and it still holds it's own against the best of the best racers on the console. The game's unique blend of insane racing action, big city environments, and criminal activity set new standards for the racing genre. Instead of a top-down view like Grand Theft Auto before it, Driver used a beautifully crafted third person, behind-the-car view, and put increased emphasis on trick and offensive driving. While the car's physics are less complicated in the Game Boy version, it remains a very fun game to play. The manual says it best; "You are Tanner, a maverick cop who hands in his badge to go under cover and take on the kingpin of crime - Castaldi." To get to the Castaldi family, Tanner must prove himself in the world of crime by becoming the best getaway driver in town. While eluding cops and pissing off rival gangs, Tanner runs jobs that include everything from smashing rival gangs vehicles to delivering ultra-cool sports cars to garages across town without scratching the paint. What a ride!
The graphical effects are pretty sweet as well. A cool trail of smoke follows the screech of the tires when you make a tight turn. The lights on the cop cars don't look that bad, but it'd be cooler if they illuminated objects nearby. The street lights don't look too shabby either despite not illuminating anything either. My one major beef with the graphics are the cars themselves. The sprites were made too small to include any detail, so instead of driving a cool black roadster, you drive a black cylinder with white dots for windows. The cop cars are usually totally indistinguishable from civilian car, save for the small black square on top. Hopefully graphical elements like these could be improved without sacrificing gameplay on the Game Boy Advance.
The mini games to play are fun, but don't offer much gameplay. In Checkpoint, your job is get to various points at different ends of the city in the fastest time without wrecking your car. Fun to try, but it gets old quick. In Getaway, you must elude the cops ASAP. Getting funner. In Survival, you must elude the cops once more to stop your precious car from getting smashed. Funnest! Take a Ride is basically practice mode, so I won't rate it on the fun factor scale. I found it slightly disapointing that the game had very little replay value after it's beaten. There are only 14 missions, and I got through 12 of those in one afternoon. The side games add some replay value, but there's no cheats, extra levels, or cars to earn, so there's little reason other than boredom to explore them. The PlayStation title had no multiplayer mode, and niether does this one. Too bad. A good game of Getaway with you as Tanner and a friend as a pig would be seriously cool and would have added plenty of replay value. The last nit-picky thing I have to mention about Driver is it's lack of a battery save. It seems silly to me that in this day and age I still have to save a piece of paper with my passwords written on it. Speaking of the password system, it doesn't even use letters or numbers. Only weird icons for us. But I mean come on, when all your mini games are highscore/fast time based, a battery save is vital!
If nothing else, rent Driver to see how fun it is. Then email Crawfish and Infogrames and tell them to put in more missions and link cable support. Driver is an incredibly fun and well made game, but for the $30 ($40 Canadian), it might be better off for hardcore gamers to rent the game and beat it in a few hours. It's not like you'll be missing anything.
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