All those involved in game making and playing know that games have bugs in them, with some flaws that are glaringly obvious to anyone, and others that even a top rate Games Tester will miss. Generally these bugs don’t impact on the gameplay too much, usually being minor art flaws and the like and these are acceptable to most game players. Furthermore if there are too many ‘showstopper’ bugs, the developer and publisher always have the option of delaying the release (a regular event in the games industry) or cancelling the project.

So how can a game which has been in development for over 4 years, had millions of dollars spent on it, come out and be so buggy that even in the opening scene the flaws are so glaringly obvious that my techno phobic, game-hating girlfriend can spot them? Because right from the moment I loaded Driv3r and started the main story mode “Undercover”, I was confronted by a jerking cinematic that was so bad I took the disk out and checked for scratches.

Not finding any I started again and got the same “effect”. Now, this is unacceptable in any game really, but when the game boasts of being a cinematic experience, yet they are thusly flawed, it totally breaks any suspension of disbelief that the game is trying to create. This is a real shame because the cinematic feel is such an integral part of this game and this immediately puts you off. In Reflections defence, there can be problems in the manufacturing process with bad media (CDs) and once it’s gone into manufacture there’s not much that can be done.

The sad truth however is that there’s much to get involved in through the cinematic story anyway. It is trite and bland with the voice acting so stiff that you aren’t involved in the story anyway. The whole feel of the game is lifeless. There’s a lack of colour throughout the game and everything seems muted and dull. There’s a real lack of polish and refinement that shows through the bad looking textures to the characters which all look alike with little emotion portrayed in the faces and gestures.

There is simply no ‘life’ portrayed in the game at all. If it’s meant to be a gritty cop action film then you need to care for someone and nothing is developed narratively beyond the minimum needed to set up the next mission. The voice acting is kind of ok, but with such an average story and generic characters anyone could have supplied the voices and the money they have used to secure names such as Mickey Rourke, Michelle Rodriguez, Ving Rhames and Iggy Pop seems wasted.

Furthermore, as soon as the actual game starts for real, you get the sense that something has gone horribly amiss. Tanner, the carry over character, moves like an overweight 50 year old. His jump, performed by the A Button, is a laughable hop of about a foot high, meaning he can’t jump over anything. The aiming is so laborious that if he was in a shoot out with a 3-toed sloth that he’d be dead 3 times over by the time you get to pull the Right Trigger. Pressing the Back button switches you to 1st Person, and it’s a little better, but still awful slow. With something this bad a working auto aim feature would be nice, but I found no difference between “On” and “Off”.

The worst control is getting into and out of the car, performed by the X button. It is so slow that if you are being shot, health will be reduced to quarter from the time you press the button to actually entering or exiting the vehicle. Tanner can swim, but again this is cumbersome, and getting out of the water takes forever, again leaving you open. Seeing that the game is called Driv3r, they could have left this on foot part out, but no, they obviously wanted a ‘GTA Killer’. I think they may have killed it by making it laugh so hard it’s sides split open and its guts gushed onto the pavement.

Luckily the on foot AI is so damn stupid it would have trouble against an anaesthetised 3-toed sloth. This is best described by example. On a boss level, you chase the boss in a boat, and he jumps onto a little shack on the water. Once in the shack I stood back from an open door with two of the boss’ guards on the other side, the boss below me on another level, but I could see his head. I repeatedly shot the top of the boss’ head until he died and mission success. He ducked a couple of times, but then kept standing up into my line of fire. The guards didn’t budge. Didn’t run in the door to shoot me, didn’t move to protect the boss, didn’t even try to fire at me through the wall, which was another “tactic” other enemies tried.

Another time I was on foot, in a windowless building, and a cop car passed by. I must have been within its detection range because it came after me, by directly driving into the wall, until I heard it explode. This is just not acceptable in games anymore, and especially not AAA rated multimillion-dollar productions.

The driving sections are kind of fun. The exaggerated physics of the cars suits the “action film” feel they were attempting, and you get a real sense of speed as you race through the streets of Miami, Nice and Istanbul. There are cars, boats and bikes to ride, and they all handle pretty well, and the use of the standard Xbox driving controls (Right Trigger to Accelerate, Left to break, B to burnout/handbreak) means it’s easy to pick up. The damage models are pretty good too, and crashing into things and shooting up the other cars looks mighty fine. This is a good thing, because you will crash into things… and quite often. And this isn’t because of bad handling, but because there are some things that you can drive through, and some things that you can’t and it’s never clear which is which. In one part of a city you can drive through the fences, and in another you can’t. Not only is there that, but the spawning distance of cars and obstacles is so ridiculously small that things will pop up as you are right on top of them.

Given that the maps are open and huge, every one of the missions is so linear that it seems a total waste. In games like GTA and True Crime the level design is such that you are always encouraged to explore. Not so in Driv3r, which follows one linear mission after another and offers no way to really explore within the main game. There are some missions that require you to reach a destination point without a timer, and you can explore on your way, but immediately after that there are timed or checkpoint missions so if you want to go back to something you saw, you generally can’t. You can cruise around in “Take a Ride” mode, and complete the races in the Driving Games Section, and these are ok (unless you leave your vehicle), but dividing the game into 3 different modes doesn’t give a sense of a cohesive world, unlike the games that Driv3r seems to emulate.

Furthermore, the missions range from ridiculously easy to controller-smashingly hard. I would not have the slightest problem if I wasn’t able to complete the mission because of lack of skill, but the annoying pop ups, bad collision detection and even often the idiocy of the A.I turn most of the missions into exercises of frustration rather than skilful manipulation of human over machine.

The best bit of this game is the music, which is done incredibly well, and puts the score up a few notches. You can have your own soundtrack, but the game soundtrack suits the action, especially the car chases. The loading screen is in the format “Previously in Driver…” much like an action series, and is something done really well. As mentioned before, the voice acting is stiff but still kind of OK, given the generic story and script, and the cars do sound pretty fast. A few extra points come from the ability to record and direct replays, which you can share on Xbox live and a bit of fun can be had watching, and giving feedback to the countless replays already available to watch.

If you were expecting ‘the next big thing’ from Driv3r (which considering the pre-release hype you had every reason to) and you’re a fan of this style of game expecting something new and exciting, you will be extremely disappointed. If you are a long time fan of the Driver series of games there may be something of interest for you here but the bugs and general dullness of the game kills any excitement that you would be looking for.

Conclusion:
The shoddy on foot action and the terrible AI, the bugs, including bad pop up, bad collision detection and glitches in animation both in cut scenes and in game, the terrible mission design and trite story add up to a really average game. If it was a budget priced game made on the cheap it may be acceptable, but this is a AAA title with a massive budget and long development time and it is simply unacceptable. What’s worse is it seems the only thing that was done right was the marketing, as Driv3r has topped the sales charts. This might indicate to game publishers that they can get away with shoddy game making as long as they market it well, and for such a classic game franchise to be handled as poorly as it has here is a real shame. If you’re a Driver fan, give it a rent, if you’re only curious we recommend you give this game a miss.

Pros
+ excellent marketing and production values
+ ‘take a ride’ mode is fun for a while
+ the driving bits are kind of fun, with good vehicle physics
+ making the replays is also fun and you can share them online

Cons
– stiff and awkward on foot action, of which there’s too much
– annoying bugs which should just not be in retail code
– incredibly linear mission design
– terrible pop up for both textures and objects
– dull, lifeless game world.
– some of the worst AI ever encountered in an Xbox game

49/100