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Note: This review is based on the Playstation version of Driver. I never played the not-for-release PC “demo” that was briefly available on the Internet.

Driver places you behind the wheel of various criminals’ getaway cars as an undercover police officer trying to expose gang activity. As an ex-racecar driver, you are the perfect choice to infiltrate the empires of crime as a hotshot wheelman. As you complete missions, short cut scenes unveil an intriguing plot.

Playing the bad guy in car games is in these days, from Carmageddon to Grand Theft Auto. GT Interactive and Reflections decided to join in with their spin on the genre, Driver. Instead of seeing the success of other companies and copying it, GT Interactive expanded it with their own unique angle, which is a refreshing change from the recent trends in game production. Rather than try to make the same thing better than someone else, GT Interactive has made an altogether new thing, and they shall reap the rewards!

In Driver you race your getaway car through the busy streets of 1970's Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, attempting to avoid the watchful eye of the boys in blue. Your selection of cars is tweaked to offer you high speeds and powerful demolition ability.

Driver is packed full of features to keep you busy. Undercover mode encompasses most of the features of the other modes in its missions. After you’re done driving, whether you succeed or not, you can view a film of your driving and change camera angles. Up to four chases can be saved in a memory slot.

Here is a brief rundown of the different play modes:

• Undercover – This is the main mode of play. You perform different missions with goals such as driving the getaway car to your hideout and paying a visit to people who won’t pay for your gang’s protection. As you progress through the game you get a choice of a few different missions to perform. This is a nice feature because if you are stuck on one mission you can beat the other to gain access to the next round of missions instead of hitting your head against the wall. The plot of the game is also revealed in this mode.
• Pursuit – You have a limited amount of time to destroy the car you’re chasing. Make sure not to lose it or you have to start over.
• Getaway – You are timed to see how quickly you can escape from the police car tailing you.
• Cross-Town Checkpoint – You are timed to see how fast you can hit the checkpoints scattered around the cities.
• Trail Blazer – A trail is set out with little markers. Try to see how many you can hit in a limited amount of time.
• Survival – The cops are ultra powerful, and they’re after you. See how long you can survive.
• Dirt Track – See how fast you can do laps around a dirt track.
• Take a Ride – Drive around the city for the fun of it, or learn the layout.

That’s a lot of gameplay options, but are they any good? Yes, very! The gameplay in Driver is fantastic. The undercover missions are challenging and there is enough variation to keep driving through the cities interesting. All of the other game modes place you right in the middle of the action, which is great if you’re in the mood for a quick drive and a little havoc, but don’t want to be bothered with completing a mission.

The action is constantly pulse pounding as new obstacles get in the way around every turn. The physics are very well modeled so that different road conditions affect your handling. You really get the feel of driving a quality American-made big 70’s car. If you think there is too much skidding in the game, a quick drive in my ’79 Cadillac should change your mind. This is really your ticket to go wild on the roads if the streets of real life are getting you down. As a final testament to the realistic feel, soon after playing I drove somewhere and had to keep reminding myself I wasn’t playing the game anymore.

Only a few gameplay problems presented themselves during playing. The one that bugged me the most was that the AI for the civilian cars was practically nonexistent. They move slowly and don’t take anything into account. If you are parked in the middle of the road, they hit you. If you're driving next to them, they hit you. And guess who the police go after?

Secondly, the first mission of undercover mode is a driving test in a garage where you have to prove your skills by executing a number of maneuvers in one minute. Although it does train you in the techniques you need to drive, I found this to be overly difficult and frustrating. One mistake and you have to try again. This would be better if it stayed in the training mode section because it really made me want to throw the game against the wall. I knew there was a great game in there, but I couldn’t get to it!

The third is that there appears to be a bug with the quick replay mode. One time after completing a mission successfully, I wanted to use the quick replay to grab some screenshots for this review. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the recording and what I saw on playback was not what really happened. Because of this, in the playback the mission wasn’t completed and I had to redo it because I hadn’t saved. The moral of the story is to save before watching your films.

Finally, I would have liked a speedometer so I could tell just how fast I was taking my turns.

Driver is filled with missions to keep you busy, and once you finish them there are still seven other modes to entertain you. With eight city settings and excellent gameplay, you will have trouble turning off Driver for a long time.

Driver supports both digital and analog controls as well as vibration. I prefer analog because it is subtler and helped me stay in control of the car while weaving through traffic. The steering is very realistic and responsive. It is obvious that great attention was paid to making the game easy to get used to and fun to play.

If you ignore the blockiness of the sky, the graphics during gameplay are as nice as the Playstation can handle. Your car has reflections, lights streak at night, and the cities are very detailed. Unfortunately, there is a little clipping, for example when you drive over a bridge. Also, when things get really intense there is occasional slowdown. Both of these are kept to a minimum, but their presence was noticeable. Sometimes at night the lights from the stoplights flew around the sky and looked like UFOs. Very freaky.

The 3D animation (if they can be called that) cut scenes, on the other hand, were horrible. The models, textures, and animation all looked like they came out of a really cheap box. You know why they’re called cutscenes? Because if they stink, you cut them out!

The sound in Driver made my stereo sing! The tunes are very high quality 70’s style songs from many different genres. They’ve got the funk! Unfortunately the engine sounds cut through all the other sound effects and the music, which is too bad because the engine sound isn’t that good but the music is.

The voice acting in the game is high quality. A little too good, actually. Bank robbing, protection-giving gangsters swear, and in Driver it’s bleeped out for our protection. Nothing rips a person out of entertainment, whether it is movies or music, than bleeped out language. If you can’t swear, then don’t! Find some other way to express yourself, but don’t bleep at me!

The game would get a 9 for almost perfect pulse pounding gameplay. Horrible cutscenes, a bug or two here and there, some graphical glitches and slowdown and sound issues bring it down to an 8. If you can look past all that, though, you won’t find a mid city demolition driving game better than this one for a while!