User Reviews (1 - 11 of 96)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

worthless waste of money

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: June 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game for a present because I thought my brother would enjoy it. I wanted to try it too, because I fell for the marketing hype (including tainted reviews in magazines that act in the interests of their advertisers instead of their readers). I also wanted to cruise around San Francisco.

My brother didn't like it, and he gave it to my neices. They said it was too hard for them. I laughed, borrowed it from them, and it ended up being a waste of time. I'm sorry I bought it in the first place.

Why, might you ask? You are REQUIRED to pass a very difficult driving test before you can do anything else with the game. The test consists of some maneuvers that require a lot of skill, and even if you are able to do each one of them, you have to do them in so little time that it is nearly impossible to pass. There is no cheat code to get around it, and you can't even go for a leisurely cruise through the cities without passing this lousy test. So for me, anyway, it makes the game useless and a useless game is a worthless game unless you enjoy getting frustrated.

I have Driver 2, and recommend that instead. At least you can play the game without having to pass a stupid test. It's difficult, so you might not play well at first, but at least you can do *something* with it. Don't get me wrong, though: Driver 2 is far from easy and the level of difficulty can be frustrating at times. At least it isn't as worthless as this piece of junk.

You can get plenty of useless CDs in the mail for free. Why pay for one?

Qualifying test is too hard!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 11
Date: December 15, 1999
Author: Amazon User

I could not complete the driver test you have to beat before the game opens up. It was way to hard! I consider myself an average gamer, but I tried and tried and couldn't complete all the things it wants you to do before the game opens up. So all I could do was drive around two cities. For a driving game, I'll wait and get Grand Turismo II. Why did they make the entry level so frustrating? Maybe it's fun after that, but who knows? Poorly thought out by the developer.

HEY DRIVER LET ME OFF!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 8
Date: November 01, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I try to do a trick on the undercover section,but is hard to do that,I try and try but I can't even pass the test.This game is not good,the graphic look horrible.yack!!

Wow...what a disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 7
Date: May 11, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Driver has one of the coolest premises ever for a video game. That they managed to screw it up so badly is almost a travesty. I must admit that, being a car-nut, I waited patiently for this game to be released. Initially I thought my intense dislike for this game was based on my unrealistic expectations, however, hindsight has not improved my perception of this atrocity.

Driver feels like the sort of game that was given zero usability testing. I'm sure that repeat playing by a third party would have revealed that the menus are difficult to navigate, that the first mission (your interview) is among the most difficult encountered over the course of the game, that the tutorial for that same mission is buried under the aforementioned menu system, that some of the missions are nearly impossibly diffuclt, that the maps are unnecessarily hard to read, that none of the streets have any "curves," but only turn at 90 degree angles, that the final mission is insanely difficult . . . but that's only the start.

The appeal of a game like Driver lies the idea of going on wild police chases through dark alleys, running over garbage cans, driving on the sidewalks, scaring pedestrians. In my experience the best way to lose cops is to find a straight and drive fast. That, in and of itself, is the making of some rather predictable gaming.

Similarly, the levels tend to have similar set ups each time you experience them: the police are generally in the same spots, the other drivers run the same lights, and so forth. The result is what I call the "Ninja Gaiden effect." On the NES game, Ninja Gaiden, you had to jump and fight your way through a series of platform levels. On the more advanced levels, you had to follow an almost exact pattern to be able to complete the level. The pattern was insanely difficult, but predictable. The same holds true for Driver: run a red light, cut between the lamppost and the building, split the road block, etc etc. It's monotonous, and since many of the longer levels are REALLY long, it's not a lot of fun to find out what move you almost certainly MUST make next by trial, error, dying, and restarting.

All this is made that much worse by the aggravating control. Though by no means horrible, it seems as if the game would have been better served by Gran Turismo-esque realism than dropping the Destruction Derby engine on the cars. Though often cited as having "real to life" musclecar handling and feel, the cars feel extremely loose and fidgety, and as anyone who has driven one will tell you, muscle cars are heavy and handle sluggishly.

Worse is that the cars feel light, and seem to have no weight to them and are made of rubber, making them extremely responsive to even a minor bump (which is what every other car in the game is trying to do to you). Graze a cop car the wrong way, and you might be doing an airborne 1080 degree propeller spin into a streetside cafe. With such a hairtrigger response, missions can be blown with a minor slip up by an ill-handling car.

The level environments was supposed to be one of the huge plusses of the game: enormous levels based on real cities with real landmarks. The game does succeed to an extent. I can find the Brooklyn Bridge, Sunset Strip, the Battery, etc, but more often than not, the representations are weak and barely distinguishable from the rest of the level. Additionally, as anyone who has ever played a driving game can tell you, tracks with a lot of corners are more fun than simply going straight. The levels have EXCLUSIVELY 90 degree corners like those found on city blocks (that includes the overpasses and freeways). Regardless of your ambition to make things more interesting by winding through some curvy roads, the play is forced into more predictable patterns by the board design. To repeat an earlier point: taking the corners allows the cops to catch up, going straight almost always allows you an easy escape.

In short, Driver is a game with enormous promise and cool missions that fails repeatedly. Some people LIKE this game, and like it a lot. I suppose it would be fine for people who don't particularly enjoy the racing genre and indeed, if there ever was a car game for non-racing fans, this would be it. However, everything that I enjoy about racing games (the cool cars, the feeling of control, the feeling of speed, the ability to do things that I would never be able to do in real life) are compromised by a lousy driving engine and the extremely inflexible/intolerant gameplay. It's the sort of experience that made me RUN back to Gran Turismo, Colin McRae, Crash Team Racing, or ANYTHING ELSE that has cars in it.

Oh, and they didn't even bother to get licenses for the cars used in the game, so your Ford Mustang looks like someone stole the Ford emblem (boo!).

This game sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: November 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I really hated this game, it is so complicated and no fun at all. I looked at the back and thought it could be fun. Every step you have to do just right and then when you do it right, you still don't pass the level and what not. If you like complicated, challenging, and non-fun games you'd like this one. Comming from a 16 year old this is what i think.

DONT BUY THIS GAME!!!!!!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: December 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I read the back of this game thinking that it wold be a good game well guess what IT'S NOT!!!! it has poor gameplay and is really hard to get past the first part and i am a very experienced gamer.Do not buy this game unless you like very boring games.

Racism is NOT fun!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 22
Date: March 03, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Ok, this is good game in the gameplay part, driving around trying to accomplish your goals (though I don't condone the Fox TV-like glorification of escaping from law enforcement officers), but I returned this game after one to many of the inbetween scenes. How much making fun of minorities can you stand? I thought this kind of humor was better left to Borchtbelt comedians from the '50's. Hopefully the sequels will rectify this mistake. An apology would be nice too.

average

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: December 19, 1999
Author: Amazon User

Driver is a good game that follows the typical undercover cop in the midst of a crimeworld scheme. Driver is more about accomplishing missions for the sake of seeing the next film clip, rather than for the fun of playing the game. It gets to the point after 10 or 12 missions where the game gets tedious and possibly even boring, same missions (different setting), and the same car (different color) over and over. I believe that the makers of the game must have given up at some point and said "That's good enough", personally not the attitude I would like to have going into a game I was considering purchasing. Overall plot could use a little work too.

Decision: If you already have every other game, you might as well complete your collection.

Not worth it

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 5
Date: January 31, 2001
Author: Amazon User

Definitely a waste of time and money. The driving is realistic and the story line works up to the point called "president's run". This level is close to impossible and leaves you ready to toss the whole game out the window. Without failure you are hurt from all sides by both the police and the bad guys turning your car a wreck in a short time where you eject the disk and send it flying.

Driver is fun, but could use a few improvements

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 20 / 35
Date: December 31, 1999
Author: Amazon User

The game claims to have 4 realistic cities, but none of them lived up to that claim. I mean, since when does a freeway have intersections? And does Miami really have a monorail that people can jump out of? (You'll see what I mean when you play it)

This is a very fun game, only because you can smash into everything, including cop cars, and actually see the damage! (unlike some other games)

My gripes? The weak storyline gets very boring after a while, and the fact that these gangsters actually talk the way that they do is a huge insult to my intelligence. The graphics are extremely boxy, and it seems that everyone in N.Y. drives a big, long, black car, and it rains everyday. (It also seems to rain everyday in L.A. too) Also, in the time that it takes to change scenes you can fix a full course dinner, which you could eat in between the next scene change!

Overall, I give this game 3 stars, but for realism, -1! I was so disappointed when I played this game, due to the fact that graphics are weak, the storyline is patronizing, and the realistic cities fall way short of that claim.

For pure fun, I give it 5 stars, but the lack of realism draws away from the fun aspect. When I first started playing it, I loved how some of the missions were to actually destroy another car! (For the destuctive side in us) However, that gets old quick, and there is nothing to keep you going after that runs out. This game is for you if you have money to burn, and own every other PS game ever made, but even if you don't, it's still fun to play if you have some time to kill.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions