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Dom Robinson reviews
Atari 
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1
- Widescreen: Yes
- 60Hz: No
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
- Xbox Live-enabled: No
Driver: Parallel Linesis the long-awaited sequel to 2004’s engaging, although somewhat problematic at times,Driv3r.Will it give you plenty of mpg? Will it stall at the starting line? Will I come out with any morelazy cliché?
The subtitle to this sequel stems from the fact that you, as TK, start off in 1978 as a young driver-for-hirewho gets in with the wrong crowd as he’s helping to take down some of the big boys from the undergroundcrime scene but is framed and ends up in the slammer for 28 years. When he goes in he’s just 18,but when he emerges, it’s 2006, a whacking 28 years later and he’s seeking revenge.
So then, it’s a question of driving from A to B in order to complete the numerous missions, both beforeand after the time change… and what a lot of driving there is to do. Missions are too far apart to getto, which is a main bugbear because after you’ve travelled a massive distance to get somewhere, thenget a bit cocky and go off on one of the many side-missions that present themselves along the wayand end up getting capped by the cops, there’s no nearby hospital at which to drop you off so it’s backaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way to your garage bloody miles away.
Thus, this kills the just-one-more-go factor that a game like this should have because you soon get fed upand put a different game on instead. You can ‘relocate’ to the other garages which cuts down sometimebut it’s still not perfect.
What also annoys is how strict the cops are. They’ll chase after you if you’re driving fast or actingsuspiciously, or even just running a ‘stop’ sign. You really have to watch yourself when playing this game,checking the map to see if they’re nearby… which doesn’t lead for exciting driving.One plus, at least, is that when the cops spot you, both you and the car get a ‘wanted’ rating. If youcan get out of sight and change cars then you can get away undetected, but if they see you get out thenyou’re stuffed and it won’t matter what car you drive. This sounds interesting in principle, but youwon’t stick to it, you’ll just drive like you do in GTA because driving normally is for real life.
As for the cars themselves, this time round they do give better handling, and you notice as you careeraround the good draw distance of the graphics with few pop-ups – not that there’s much to look atsince Driver: Parallel Lines features very bland cities that just don’t seem to have the lifeor atmosphere in them like the GTA games it’s trying to emulate. You also don’t get stopped by runninginto lamp posts anymore as long as you’re travelling at speed, you can just knock ’em over a la GTAwhich saves for embarrassing moments when you’re raging down the road in a lorry miss a turn and twata lamppost, which made the rear-end jump up in the air in an unnatural fashion given that you’d justcut through lanes of cars like a knife through butter(!)
You can also customise your cars as you go, but if you’re like me then you’ll be driving like a demon andbashing them up at most opportunities so you’ll be acting conservatively if you go more than a fewstreets without thinking about changing it, so why bother spending money on it?
Also, while driving, there’s a “Thrill-cam” button, which isn’t particularly thrilling and is somethingyou’ll use for a while early on and then not bother. All it does is take a ‘live’ close-up view of yourcar in slow motion as you drive past the virtual camera, but doesn’t allow you to save this footage, notthat you’d really want to.
Talking of saving footage, where did the movie director mode go? That was one of the most fun parts ofDriv3rand which really set it apart, as well as other aspects, from the most famous drive-and-be-violent gameI referred to earlier.
However, it’s good that this time they’ve taken some time to redevelop your character when walking suchthat you can turn him 360o rather than see him always facing forward and looking like he hadpiles when moving about. This, again follows a lot in the footsteps of GTA. Alas, you can’t jump butat least you can crouch while walking which was something you couldn’t do last time.
When it comes to the aural interludes you can use more than just the default game playlist by selectingthose tracks which you’ve already ripped to your Xbox hard drive, although those do start by includingcool ’70s tunes such as David Bowie (Suffragette City), Blondie (One Way Or Another)and The Stranglers (Peaches), so not to worry too much although the in-game tracks do seem torepeat with alarming regularity; there’s certainly not as big a variety as in… yes, you guessed it.
Overall, Driver: Parallel Lines is a disappointment. We’ve been to the 1970s before inGrand Theft Auto IIIand whereas Driv3r had its problems it did have a style to it that kept it well enough apartfrom the competition and kept me coming back until I completed it but it just needed to fix the walkingand driving problems it had back then, which has been mostly achieved (c’mon, really, why can’t he jump?)
Sadly, Reflections have failed to put 2 and 2 together to make ‘4’ being the number in the serieswhere everything fits together perfectly. Instead, they’ve thrown that chance away and made an endresult that’s too much of a GTA clone and, let’s face it, nobody does it better than Rockstar for design,implementation and just goddamn coolness!
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.