Driver 2

Ah, and that's where Driver 2 comes in. Reflections' sequel to one of my personal favorite videogames ever is a mere shadow of its former self. It's one of the most disappointing games, if not the most disappointing game, of 2000. Infogrames and Reflections came through with many of their promises of new additions, such as the ability to get out of the car, two-player missions, more cars to drive, easier missions, etc., etc. But the game simply falters under the weight of an already pushed-to-the-limit engine and like a leaky ship heading out into a storm, Driver 2 simply bursts from too much pressure. It's as if Reflections took a giant microscope to the problems from the first and asked CBS to film and nationally televise every single weak spot in this sequel, right from level one all the way to the end. Driver 2, in the vernacular, is weak sauce, a rushed, unbalanced, unfortunate and seemingly abandoned game that doesn't measure up the first by a long shot, and will disappoint many, many fans. It did this one.

Gameplay
Driver 2 takes gamers into the realm of sleazy, back street Mafia-infested world, and puts you in the role of Tanner, an undercover cop who has a knack for driving and getting out of tight situations. Continuing on the theme of '70s style car chases born from movies such as Bullitt and TV shows such as Starsky and Hutch, Reflections' Driver and Driver 2 sets players down in the driver seats of heavy, American sedans, generally seated with 8-cylinder engines, and the classic inability to turn without sliding.

In Driver 2, players have several new abilities that weren't available in Driver, including getting out of the car, and hijacking any other car on the road. Along with the ability to get out of a car is the concept of a central character, which Driver didn't really have. As Tanner, you can hop in and out of cars in most levels, and you can also walk and run around on foot. The concept is great, and while it's not original (thanks to DMA and Grand Theft Auto), it should add great value to the game. Unfortunately, Reflections executed this aspect of the game so poorly you almost fear leaving your car. When on two feet, the third-person perspective camera control is primitive and stiff, and in the levels in which Tanner must perform actions in a time limit, it's absolutely maddening.

Driver 2 also adds new environmental aspects to the game that should make for some different driving experiences. The new levels include changes such as curved roads, freeways, freeway off-ramps and on-ramps, tunnels, and working garages that add subtle but welcome changes to the once grid-based streets of San Francisco and Florida in Driver. Based on what Reflections had said before, these additions made me feel as if the game would play better because of them. But frankly, the curved surfaces, such as winding freeway offramps, don't add one iota of gameplay sparkle. In fact, I'm bugged by so many other things like horrible framerates, stuttering animation, and levels that actually lock up (yes, that happened twice on the good final copy), that I'm hardly looking at anything but red. Oh yeah, did I say the framerates were so bad that they ruin any sense of speed, control, and erm, fun? Well, in case, I didn't...

Right. So...did I say the game made my throw the controller at the TV a dozen times? No. Moving on then... Driver 2 delivers the same kind of variety that last year's game brought us: it added a few minigames and lost a few. One of my favorite parts of the first game was the introductory test drive. You tested your mettle by performing all of the driving moves in a garage before moving on. Seemed fair enough. It wasn't terribly easy, but you were learning skills. Apparently after many focus group tests, the consensus was that it was too hard. That sucks, in my humble opinion.

Driver 2 retained the frenetic and humbling minigame Survivor, which is just as hard as ever (and strangely enough my new record is almost exactly the same as it was in the first 45 seconds, before I learned some real neat tricks), maybe even harder. And Gate Chase, Capture the Flag, Take a Ride, and Checkpoint are all part of the two-player mode as well. Quick Chase has changed the most, and for the worst. It's almost impossible to catch up and slam and destroy the chasee, and it's lost much of its charm because of that.

The two-player games are OK. Strangely, they don't add too much excitement or variety to the whole Driver 2 experience. Perhaps that's because the games are almost all the same as the single-player ones. In two-player, the camera is fixed in first-person perspective and the framerates are no worse than in the regular game. There are points when it's fun, but overall it's not a desirable experience. Sounds better on paper.

Players can also get to grips with the newly reformed Undercover mode. This is made all new by adding lots more in-game cutscenes and well-produced movie renders that tell the convoluted boring story. I'm just kidding. It's not any better than it was before. The movies make a little more sense, and the mode is linear now, but the story is so non-compelling that I'd have more fun sleeping in front of Best Buy for a PS2 in the rain than watching these mundane, cryptic, fluff scenes. In essence, Undercover is a totally unbalanced, quirky creature that looks as if it slipped right by QA. Ouch. The first two levels are easy, the third quite hard, followed by easy, hard, a few near impossible, and so on. It's chaos I tell you.

I could go on and on. But I won't. What I will say is that Driver 2 appears to have been thwarted by tight deadlines that weren't made, or not testing, or quarterly profits forcing early release, or all of the above. And the result shows. Driver 2 is the worst kind of sequel. It's totally unbalanced through all of the levels, the game mechanics are sloppy, and the fun has been squeezed almost entirely out of the game. I'm just bummed about it.

Graphics
I have the sad job of not being finished with my rant. The graphics in Driver 2 are worst than the first. The texture maps are actually better looking and greater in variety than in Driver. And the movies, the rendered ones, are quite professionally done. The characters move in realistic ways, the coats and jackets flop and bounce like in real life, and even the facial animations are better than decent. That's all I can say in the positive column.

On the flip side, Driver 2's framerate sucks. The pop-up is worse than before, and the in-game movies that often precede the game can't be skipped. Whole cities pop up in front of your eyes while driving. The graphics, somehow, are muddier than before. The low resolution from the first game is still there, but along with the chuggy frames, the murky graphics, and the pop up, Driver 2's engine is clearly being pushed beyond what it can handle. The results are bad. Driver 2 looks worse than the first one. Bad Reflections! Bad!

Sound
All of the stock crashing, breaking, window-shattering sounds from the first are back in standard form in Driver 2. They were good the first time and they're bearable the second time, but they do become repetitive after a few levels.

Still, they don't fall into the "super annoying sound" column I have created especially for this very review. Driver 2's in-game music, which was cheesy, chintzy and annoying in the first game, is even worse than before! When I heard that Reflections was using Cuban, blues, and other kinds of music in the game, I mistakenly believed that the good music would be used in the levels themselves, and would replace the super cheese porn-irific stuff from the first game. How mistaken I was. The ear-bleeding high-pitched haggis that spouts from this game is hurtful, and no human should willingly have to listen to this for long periods of time.