“Friday Old Games” is a series of articles in which we review a game from the older generations of consoles, share why we picked it, and whether or not it holds up with time.

Before you were a gangster on the mean streets of Liberty City or a super powered cop in Pacific City, there was Driver on the original Playstation. You take on the role of Tanner, an undercover cop and former race car driver. It is up to you to infiltrate the gangs and help clean up New York City from the inside out.

After an initial cutscene setting up the undercover cop plot, Driver sticks you in a parking lot with a laundry list of maneuvers to perform and only one minute to do them in. No instructions are given, and if you crash (in even a minor way) four times, it is game over.

The good news is, the game’s controls are pretty easy to pick up and you restart very quickly. This is good because you will restart on this segment. Many, many times.

The bulk of the game revolves around you getting from point A to point B without taking too much damage or running out of time. If you take too much damage, you fail the mission. The other main mission type involves you trying to ram the car of various notorious gangsters off the road.

This is pre-GTA3, so you are stuck with the car they gave you. You can’t hop out and steal someone else’s vehicle to keep the mission going. Besides, you are a cop and I doubt that would go over very well with your chief anyway.

Since this is an older game, it uses only the D-Pad; digital controls. To make small turns, you have to make short taps on the controller and end up doing a lot of correcting for over-steering. The AI is also very dated. When the cops (who don’t know you are on their side) are after you, their only tactic is to move in as straight a line as possible to try to ram into your car.

This leads to some pretty hilarious situations. If your felony meter is up and you approach a police car from the back, they will smash themselves into walls and other traffic trying to turn around to chase you.

Because of technical limitations of the time, every turn in the road is a perfect 45 degree angle. There are no curved roads in the cities of Driver. However, they did do a good job of making the cities in the game feel large. There are a lot of other cars on the road, and even pedestrians on the sidewalks. Unlike GTA, they will leap out of the way of your vehicle and are impossible to run over.

The game takes place in four different cities: Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and finally New York. Even with the original Playstation’s limitations, they are able to give each city it’s own look and feel. There are even some well done night to day effects in some levels.

The soundtrack is very funkadelic, but the sound effects greatly over-power it. The sound of revving engines will really start to grate on your nerves after playing for any extended period. Thankfully, there are sound options where you can turn the music way up and the sound effects way, way down.

Why did I pick this game?

While re-organizing my game collection last weekend (because they were all over the living room, much to the chagrin of my wife), I realized that I kept very few of my original Playstation games. Driver and Marvel VS Capcom (the first one) being the only non-JRPGs that I have held on to.

I had a lot of fond memories of playing hot-seat co-op with Jesse on Driver back in the day. At some point, we were even able to reach the final stage, but never able to finish it.

How does it hold up with time?

Most games for the original Playstation do not hold up well. The same goes for nearly all early 3D titles. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Driver, while obviously dated, was still fun. It is way harder than I remember it, and the lack of analog controls make taking tight turns tricky.

I also thought the amount of time given was a little too harsh. On most levels, you have only enough time to get to your destination. This ended in me being within ten feet of my goal when the timer hit zero and having to play the entire level over again. It is a very dated mechanic to have no checkpoints in your missions.

Even with its flaws, Driver does a great job of laying the groundwork for later titles like Grand Theft Auto 3 and beyond. It was a lot more fun to go back to than I was expecting. You can now find it on the Playstation Network Store and bargain bins of places that still carry original Playstation games.

Tags: Driver, Friday Old Games, Grand Theft Auto, GT Interactive, Playstation, reflections interactive

This entry was posted on Friday, March 26th, 2010 at 11:31 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.