PSP World

Driver 76

The Driver series has proved incredibly popular over the years with the first two outings selling millions of units on the original Playstation. That was until the eagerly anticipated Driver 3 flopped and everything fell apart. It's fair to say that this surprised everyone as the third in the series had a considerably greater development time and budget and it also featured an all-star Hollywood cast. Last year’s Parallel Lines only fared slightly better with most critics citing the movement to the GTA style of gaming a big mistake. Driver 76 is the first time the series has appeared on Sony's handheld and takes place some two years before the events of Parallel Lines. The various trailers have certainly pushed the whole 70s retro thing but what does the game actually play like?

In Driver 76 you play the role of hired wheelman Ray who's planning to make it big in the city with the aid of his jive-talkin' sidekick Slick. Your main motivation for undertaking a whole host of illegal, and occasionally dangerous, jobs is to win over the affections of a certain Triad Boss’ daughter. Clearly love makes you do strange things. From here you start out on almost thirty separate jobs in order to gain a credible 'rep' and amass some serious wealth. If you've ever played any of the Driver games, it's now business as usual as you are given instructions of exactly what the next job entails and the various criteria you need to fulfill. To be honest, many of these are less than inspiring and things like collecting a car and bringing it back to the lock-up can be completed with little problem. Things step up a gear when the missions become more challenging and better still, are against a timer of some description. There are two more notable missions; one simply involves you hijacking three armored vehicles in a given time limit and another has you stealing an ambulance and delivering a heart without sustaining too much damage and before the ice melts around the vital organ. You will occasionally have to step out of your car but given how awkwardly this handles you'll want to get straight back behind the wheel.

One thing that makes even the more complicated jobs less challenging is the rather weak AI of the police who not only become incredibly predictable but also are also very easy to outrun. In addition to your main missions there are many side pursuits. These generally involve a race of some description but winning does mean more money, which can be used to upgrade your cars or weapons but given the lack of any real challenge you'll find that your initial mode of transport is more than suitable to complete the game. Even without parting with any money though, you can still amass a huge collection of stuff thanks to items awarded at the end of each mission. You can also collect a whole host of goodies by collecting the gold stars that are dotted around the city. Some of these appear to be in impossible locations but a little experimentation and some death defying stunts should allow you to get them all. Finally there are a handful of multi-player modes but given that these have had too little thought given too them you are probably better sticking to what traditional racers have to offer. For the record though most of them involve simply racing around the streets of New York without getting too banged up. Like most of the missions here they’re not terribly gripping.

Visually the game works very well indeed with the main story told through a selection of comic book style cut screens. This works a lot better than you'd imagine and links the various sections seamlessly. After this it switches to a 3D engine with 1970s New York beautifully realized. It not only features an incredible draw distance but also suitably detailed textures. It's not perfect though and while well-known landmarks such as Times Square and Central Park are present, the rest is padded out with generic streets. There are still districts though and you can travel from Queens to Manhattan via one of the bridges or tunnels with each area looking significantly different from the other. One thing you will notice however is just how quiet the streets are and if you've ever been to the Big Apple you'll know that this is never the case even in the early hours of the morning. This is clearly done for a number of reasons but careering around a corner only to find yourself in the middle of a traffic jam would have been far more realistic and don't even get me started on the lack of potential customers for the taxi drivers.

Being a huge music fan I found the soundtrack very appealing as the developers have managed to sign an incredible array of original 70s gems including the foot tappin' Bustin' Loose by Charles Brown and other classics from Blondie to Bowie. These play throughout the game presumably coming from the various car radios and not just that movie style soundtrack which comes out of nowhere. There are also some great sound effects and some excellent voice acting, which while occasionally clichéd do a fine job of bringing the characters to life.

While Driver 76 is fun while it lasts it's not without its problems, the biggest of which is the games length in Story Mode. Yes there are extra modes and I'm sure that after some time you could have challenged every single car owner to a race but the main plot is a little too shallow for its own good. In addition to this some of the missions lack any real challenge and the 'on-foot' combat sections should have been done away with all together. The biggest gripe is a minor but very irritating one and while we all realize that we simply can’t have a fully realized major city without any loading time, the fact that this occurs as you are tearing down the road is unforgivable. Even with these minus points though Driver76 is a welcome addition to the mission based driving genre and if the next installment addresses these problems gamers could be in for one hell of a drive.