If you played Driver when  it came out for the Playstation and PC in 1999, your memories are probably bittersweet.  While the physics, pre-GTA open world driving and crazy cops-on-crank made for some fond memories, the difficulty was legendary and sent many a frustrated gamer in search of the latest cheat codes.  Gameloft has ported a complete version of this gaming classic to the Iphone with decreased difficulty and upgraded graphics to give mobile gamers the most fun you can have driving without getting busted.

  

The 4 cities, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, are enormous and filled with landmarks and familiar roads that give a sense of reality to the wild and reckless driving.  The undercover story mode contains 40 missions all with multiple stages which along with a trunk load full of  mini games like pursuit, getaway, survival, checkpoint and dirt track will have you screeching through these streets for weeks.  The undercover missions have time limits which precludes careful cruising, although there is a “take a ride” mode for that, and soon your pedal-to-the-metal driving will bring the dogs of hell out to try to ram you into oblivion.

Repeated failure in most games leads to frustration but the smile Driver brings to my face with it’s mad dog police flying over hills and slamming into everything in sight in their desperate attempt to bring you to justice  keeps me coming back for more.  While the difficulty does seem to be toned down from the original, Driver is by no means an easy ride.  There are two difficulty settings, easy and normal, and even on easy many of the missions require repeated tries.  In particular, the Informant chapter has a couple of tough missions where you have to chase an armored truck and an overhead train.  My advice is to learn the routes.

  

There’s a great feeling of freedom to Driver even during the missions.  A green path on the map will show you the shortest route to your objective but you’re free to choose any route you desire especially if you want to evade roadblocks or the heat.  As you change your route, the green path changes with you so you’re never lost.  At points in the story, you’ll get to choose which missions you’ll run through the messages left on your phone.  I’d save at these points as you never know when you’ll run into a series of particularly tough missions. There’s a random unpredictability to the police AI that keeps the game fresh on repeated plays.

The one problem with Driver is that the controls need work.  You have three choices; D-pad,
accelerometer and virtual stick.  The accelerometer is uncontrollable for high speed maneuvers with your 1970’s springy suspension muscle car and the gas pedal was buggy when using the tilt.  The virtual stick just doesn’t work half the time.  I used the D-pad which took some getting used to since the force of your touch determines how hard you turn.  

  

The 1970’s atmosphere and attitude is ingrained down to the music, DJ and dialogue of the rather dark cut scenes and the sound is terrific in every respect from the massive collisions to the screeching tires and constant police chatter as you run for your life. There are three camera views; following, in car and a nice bumper view.  

Despite the control issues, Driver is a fantastically FUN 4 star gaming experience that I just can’t stop playing. Its sense of freedom and unpredictability along with all the familiar sights gives it an air of reality that is uncanny.


goyami@comcast.net