First Look: Driver
Not a racing game, a getaway-driver game, and it looks like a blast.
Driver isn’t another racing game, it’s an all-new kind of driving game, and it has me grinning already. It recreates the adrenaline of the best Hollywood car chases, set in the 1970s when gas-guzzling muscle cars were the standard. You take on the persona of Tanner, an undercover cop posing as a driver for hire to infiltrate a crime ring that spans four of the nation’s largest cities: New York, LA, Miami and San Francisco.
Each city is modelled in full 3D with accurate maps and landmarks of its real-life counterpart, and the realism doesn’t stop there: working traffic lights, motorists, pedestrians and cops on patrol all share the road with you. Accept a job and you’ll have to make your pickup at exactly the right time, arrive too soon and risk being spotted by the cops, too late and the mob is after you.
What really has my attention is the replay system, billed as the most elaborate ever put in a game. Once you’ve made a getaway you can position cameras anywhere and cut your own high-speed chase together scene by scene. By the sound of it they’re as much fun to create as they are to watch. Ever wanted to drive the wrong way down Broadway at the height of rush hour doing 80 MPH? Here’s your chance.
Whether the mission timing and police AI stay thrilling rather than fiddly across a whole campaign, and how deep that replay editor really goes.