Driver: Parallel Lines
What, no DrIVer? Hey, at least the series is back on track.
Published: April 10, 2006
I can still remember to this day the first thing out of my mouth after playing about an hour of Grand Theft Auto III: “This is everything that Driver is and it’s only like 10% of the game!” It was true, for as much as GTA3 was a completely groundbreaking experience, the boys and girls at DMA design had Reflections to thank for paving the way.
But as the GTA games continued building on the success of GTA3, everyone expected Reflections to counter with something big. Their answer was Driv3r, which was built off the Stuntman engine, a solid racing engine but an abysmal game. No surprise, then, that Driv3r was an almost complete failure as a driving experience, and even worse when it came time to get out of the car.
What was needed was a serious back-to-basics approach to the series. The original Driver wowed with how expansive it was, but more than that, it was badass funk music whacka-dooing in the background as you came to a halt at the top of a San Francisco hill and let three cop cars go sailing over your head in slo-mo. Driver was and always will be about a definitive driving experience; I mean, it’s in the title, man, but somewhere along the way Reflections got caught up in playing catch-up and forgot the series’ roots.
Parallel Lines returns to those roots, and while most of the game feels like an unabashed GTA clone now (which, given the undeniable similarity, is all but unavoidable), the core of the game is there, and it’s combined with a physics engine that is more even-handed and infinitely more playable, graphics and car deformation that recall the Destruction Derby days, a kick ass 70s soundtrack, and improved (but still ultimately poor) on-foot controls.
The title is a direct reference to the story, which places you in late 70s New York as TK, a smart-mouthed kid with a knack for being a good wheelman. He gets mixed in with a couple of the Big Apple’s riff-raff, gets double-crossed, tossed in the clink and nearly three decades later, wants revenge. Big time. The storyline allows you to get immersed in the basics of taking jobs, competing in races, and basically lets you learn New York a bit, then throws you for a loop and lets you bask in the kind of changes that took place while TK was behind bars.
No matter the decade, Reflections took the time to fix some glaring issues from the previous two games. For starters, the handing is probably the best of any game in the genre. There’s weight to them, but unlock Driv3r or Stuntman, cars aren’t too heavy, and you actually get a sense as you change decades that the cars have become lighter and more nimble. I miss the burnout button for easy donuts, but no other series can replicate the feeling of e-braking around a corner and weaving through traffic to ditch cops.
Ditching cops is another area where the game has improved, not so much from the cop AI (though that’s always been fairly aggressive) but rather in the way you collect heat. So long as you’re not riding on a bike where it’s obvious who the rider is, you pick up heat based on the car you’re driving, so if you’ve got a tail, pulling into an alleyway or parking garage and ditching the car will let you walk right by the cops. Of course, if you whip out a gun and start shooting guys in front of a cop or roll down the window and start popping off shots at another car while being chased, then the heat is applied to you, but the fact that cops can’t magically see which car you’ve switched to is brilliant.
But as the GTA games continued building on the success of GTA3, everyone expected Reflections to counter with something big. Their answer was Driv3r, which was built off the Stuntman engine, a solid racing engine but an abysmal game. No surprise, then, that Driv3r was an almost complete failure as a driving experience, and even worse when it came time to get out of the car.
What was needed was a serious back-to-basics approach to the series. The original Driver wowed with how expansive it was, but more than that, it was badass funk music whacka-dooing in the background as you came to a halt at the top of a San Francisco hill and let three cop cars go sailing over your head in slo-mo. Driver was and always will be about a definitive driving experience; I mean, it’s in the title, man, but somewhere along the way Reflections got caught up in playing catch-up and forgot the series’ roots.
Parallel Lines returns to those roots, and while most of the game feels like an unabashed GTA clone now (which, given the undeniable similarity, is all but unavoidable), the core of the game is there, and it’s combined with a physics engine that is more even-handed and infinitely more playable, graphics and car deformation that recall the Destruction Derby days, a kick ass 70s soundtrack, and improved (but still ultimately poor) on-foot controls.
The title is a direct reference to the story, which places you in late 70s New York as TK, a smart-mouthed kid with a knack for being a good wheelman. He gets mixed in with a couple of the Big Apple’s riff-raff, gets double-crossed, tossed in the clink and nearly three decades later, wants revenge. Big time. The storyline allows you to get immersed in the basics of taking jobs, competing in races, and basically lets you learn New York a bit, then throws you for a loop and lets you bask in the kind of changes that took place while TK was behind bars.
No matter the decade, Reflections took the time to fix some glaring issues from the previous two games. For starters, the handing is probably the best of any game in the genre. There’s weight to them, but unlock Driv3r or Stuntman, cars aren’t too heavy, and you actually get a sense as you change decades that the cars have become lighter and more nimble. I miss the burnout button for easy donuts, but no other series can replicate the feeling of e-braking around a corner and weaving through traffic to ditch cops.
Ditching cops is another area where the game has improved, not so much from the cop AI (though that’s always been fairly aggressive) but rather in the way you collect heat. So long as you’re not riding on a bike where it’s obvious who the rider is, you pick up heat based on the car you’re driving, so if you’ve got a tail, pulling into an alleyway or parking garage and ditching the car will let you walk right by the cops. Of course, if you whip out a gun and start shooting guys in front of a cop or roll down the window and start popping off shots at another car while being chased, then the heat is applied to you, but the fact that cops can’t magically see which car you’ve switched to is brilliant.
