Driv3r Preview

Driver has been a popular series for quite awhile, and all of us fans have been waiting for the third in the series for a long time now. Well, it was worth the wait. Driv3r follows Tanner once again, doing the undercover thing as usual.

By now the story has already been uncovered, but for those of you that haven’t heard I’ll give you the basics. Tanner is undercover once again, and he needs to find and stop a major car theft that’s about to go down. The game will play out in three very different locations: Miami, Nice, and Istanbul.

The main focus of the game is in the driving aspect, but like Driver 2 you can leave your vehicle and steal the one that most closely fits your taste. The out of car controls have been improved since Driver 2, and by quite a lot. It is now no longer a hassle to get out and run around like it used to be.

Out of car antics will be necessary at times, but most of the game will be based on driving. This is a good thing, because the driving engine in Driv3r is just as sharp as ever. The frame rate was smooth and the controls were spot on.

A lot of the draw to Driver series is attributed to its amazing physics and incredibly detailed damage modeling. In Driv3r these things have been upgraded to an extremely realistic level. Pedestrians can now be hit, and they react to whatever they hit with some impressive ragdoll physics. Cars react realistically to each other when colliding, and now the car deformation goes as far as losing doors or even exploding into pieces. Another small but noteworthy detail is how bullet holes actually show up on the cars when you shoot them. As far as I know this has not yet been done in a game of this size and it’s really cool to see bullet holes dance across the side of a car during a firefight.

Driv3r makes the changes that needed to be made in order to revive the Driver series. Driv3r should offer some insane car chases and gun fights. Luckily we won’t have to wait long for this one; it’s due out this June.   

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