Larry knows his onions. I loved Driver 1 & 2 but once GTA came out, the series was under a lot of pressure. The next game after Driver 3 would feature a criminal protagonist instead of the undercover cop we know and love, and players had to get out of the car to engage in run & gun sections. The series tried to play catch-up to GTA instead of doing its own thing.
Driver: San Francisco was a great return to form with its crazy Life on Mars plot and ‘shifting’ mechanic where you could jump to an overworld view and project your consciousness into nearby cars. It was Driver once again. Since then the series has been reduced to a free-to-play smartphone game like so many other once memorable franchises.
CARRiON.FLOWERS: Driver is a title that, when brought up, brings back memories of the nearly impossible tutorial level which sent me into such a rage that I smashed my controller against the wall.
Yeah, I got stuck on that for quite a while back in 99. Knowing nothing about cars, I didn’t recognise the shorthand names of the manoeuvres it was asking me to do, and the one minute time limit leaves no room for experimentation. Funnily enough even if you know exactly what to do, it can still be quite difficult to beat the time. Got to be one of the hardest tutorial levels ever!
