Driver: Parallel Lines Review (Xbox)

I remember being blown away by the original Driver on PSone because it was one of the first games where you could go “Wow! I’m driving through a real city and I can do whatever I want!” In the years since then, we have seen countless games that have taken that idea and ran with it while Driver has struggled to catch up. Parallel Lines is definitely better than the last two Driver games, but it still fails to live up to the immense potential of the original and is light years behind GTA.

Story and Setting

The story in Parallel Lines follows a getaway driver named TK in New York City. In a great twist that was amazingly well executed here, the game takes place both in 1979 and later on in 2006. You can freely roam around the city and do missions or minigames and a nice touch, even the minigames have something to do with the overall story. Back in 1979 you control TK as he lives the good life of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and really fast cars. But he is betrayed and winds up in jail. When he gets out, it is 2006 and the game changes from TK wanting to find fast cars and fast women to simply wanting revenge on each and every person that set him up and sent him to jail.

The storyline is actually pretty darn good and seeing the same people and places in ’79 and then again in ’06 is pretty wild. The city changes a bit and as you can probably imagine, the cars get a fairly major upgrade which makes the game that little bit more fun and exciting when you finally get out of the pen. This mix of the new and the familiar between ’79 and ’06 and the change of focus in the storyline really keep you hooked in Parallel Lines. The story isn’t the weak point here.

Gameplay

Where Parallel Lines falters is the gameplay. It plays quite a bit like GTA – you drive around and you can get out and shoot stuff – but it just has a really clumsy feel to it. In the on foot sections there seems to be a slight delay between pressing a button and something actually happening. You get used to it, but it feels horrible. Movement on foot is helped by a fairly decent camera, and the shooting and combat isn’t bad, but it flat out isn’t anywhere near as good as what you find in GTA. And when you are trying to copy what GTA has done exactly, which is what Parallel Lines and Driv3r are obviously trying to do, being close to the same isn’t good enough. Luckily, the developers knew the on foot missions aren’t the strong point of Driver, so there is more of a focus on driving than shootouts this time around. I have to say that the car controls are really quite good here and driving around and getting into police chases is maybe a even smidgen better than GTA thanks to the realistic physics. Sadly, the trial-and-error, insanely difficult mission style Driver has always used rears its ugly head in Parallel Lines. In the end, the frustration of repeated failure isn’t worth the effort here.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Parallel Lines isn’t too impressive. Bland textures cover everything and the animation is pretty jittery and bad overall. The car models look pretty good and they show realistic damage, which is nice. Most importantly, particularly if you played Driv3r, the game runs a lot smoother and there isn’t nearly as much of that ugly popup or polygon tearing or any of the other nastiness that game suffered from. One very nice aspect of the presentation are the pre rendered cutscenes in the story. These look absolutely amazing which just makes the in game graphics look all the worse.

The sound is pretty good in Parallel Lines. All of the voice actors did a really good job bringing the story to life and the sound effects for all of the cars, gunfire, crashes, and everything else are great. The soundtrack is also very good and features licensed music from the ’70s as well as current artists.

Bottom Line

Driver: Parallel Lines definitely points the franchise in the right direction after the debacle that was Driv3r, but it still has a ways to go to catch up to GTA. The story is good, but the on foot sections stink. The driving can be fun – it has always been the best part of Driver - but the missions are so difficult and annoying that all of the frustration just isn’t worth it. It isn’t bad, per se, it just isn’t all that good. Worth a rental and nothing more.