Driver: Parallel Lines (18)
Verdict: If at first you don’t succeed...
Platform: PS2, Xbox.
Rating: 3½/5
In the post Grand Theft Auto 3 landscape the Driver series was always going to have a rough time responding to Rockstar’s sandbox opus and Driv3r certainly wasn’t the correct response. Parallel Lines seeks to compete with GTA whilst carving out it’s own niche in the genre and repairing it’s tarnished name. Like a fumbled bank heist it almost pulls it off too.
Throwing you into the role of a young getaway driver, you’re thrust into a 1970’s New York full of cops and robbers car chases replete with cardboard box filled alleyways and iconic music. Flairs and Afros included. Later on the story twists and shifts to the contrasting present day making the 70’s seem altogether brown.
In sharp contrast to Driv3r, Parallel Lines features an impressively robust game engine. The draw distance is massive, everything is solid and bugs are at a minimum (apart from the odd physics glitch that can send your car disco dancing into the air in a fit of epilepsy).
The city is also vastly different to Driv3r’s - it’s heavily populated and teeming with life although it seems like they’ve over compensated for Driv3r’s barren wilderness - the roads can be so busy that high speed car chases become too staccato, forcing you to weave around the traffic at a stilted pace. Realistic it may be, fun it isn’t.
Car handling is finely tuned as expected from the series and is also an important feature of the game as you can repair, paint and upgrade any car you steal - if it gets destroyed it conveniently returns to the garage allowing you to continually experiment with the perfect getaway vehicle. Or best looking one.
Parallel Lines has a lot going for it. It’s authentically stylised, plays well, looks good, has worthwhile sandbox elements, uniquely introduces a stealth mechanic to car chases and improves upon it’s predecessor ten fold. As much as I wanted to like this game however it just kept falling short with poor design issues like cruel restart points, unskippable cut scenes and unclear objectives which ended up just driving me to distraction.