Despite all the modes the game is simplicity in itself and that is one of the several factors that will keep you coming back for more. The cars around you, the cops, pedestrians and even the waste papers, boxes and bins on the sides of the road all act as though they would in a real world. The physics in this engine are a lot of fun and so it would seem the developers have capitalised on it. Police cars don't just turn around corners, they swerve bending to one side before rocking back like a ball on a spring as it is hit over. You end up bouncing all over place, over bumps, corners and ending up doing a lot of different stunts. Once you play the game enough and actually learn to control your car that is when Driver comes into its own.

The single player campaign game is based around you being an undercover cop who has to work for the bad guys and be their driver for a little while. Accompanied by suitably 70's back tracks the game takes you on car chase after car chase as you whisk your way around different city's to complete your mission objectives. There's constant variation in the mission goals and often to complete a mission you will have several tasks to do, this usually involves racing against a clock to get to somewhere in time or getting away from police. The sad fact is the difficulty levels mean very little in Driver. Only changing the intelligence of cops and making your car a little easier to damage, time never changes. This means from the word GO you have to be a good driver or else you won't get far very quickly.

The plot thickens

The AI in the game is good but sadly a little unrealistic, failing in that cops are completely insane. They utterly disregard the lives of those around them often by heading strait for pedestrians or other cars just so they can hit you from the side. It really feels like your being chased by an unstoppable robot, thankfully when you do finally loose them it's a great reward and you start longing for the next BIG chase. So it ends up being a mixture of everything, at times the AI is rewarding and challenging in the way it handles and pursues you through the dense city streets. Other times it can be frustrating as groups gang bang and fender bender you into a corner with disregard for all those around you, theses guys are nuts.

If you die then that's it, you have to restart the entire level, which can be annoying when it's based in stages of tasks to complete and often gets boring because you have to re-play it. I would have liked to see more than just basic car damage, sure you smoke, get mangled and dented but it's no destruction derby and nothing ever blows up. A pity since they usually did in those crummy 70's cop shows. Thankfully all this goes together to create a rather fun and addictive game so long as you can get used to it. The game play may seem repetitive but the mission goals constantly change the way you think and drive so it's almost always original in that respect.

It's a grave disappointment that Driver missed the golden opportunity of Multiplayer in this rather more lavish than usual port of a PSX game. There is no mode and this would have virtually made the game for me had it been there, you could have forgotten GTA then. So if Midtown madness or GTA is your style of play then Driver is bound to ring a tone in your ears and say it's born for you to play.

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