Driver

aka: Driver: Você é o Motorista, Driver: You are the Wheelman
Moby ID: 309
PlayStation Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/28 8:59 PM )
Included in See Also

Description official descriptions

As Tanner, the player will go undercover to be the wheelman for a crime syndicate in order to break open a big case. On the way, they will have to eliminate competition, drive getaway cars, scare some people silly, evade plenty of police, dodge bad guys, smash through a few windows, save their love interest, and much more through four cities (Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York).

The game gives a lot of freedom to navigate the streets of the various cities, allowing to cut through alleyways or across sidewalks and parks while smashing benches and driving over traffic cones, and provides a wide variety of vehicles to ride through the different missions, as well as the ability to perform various maneuvers such as donuts, 180 spins, or reverse spins.

Also includes several game modes such as Practice, Carnage (cause as much damage as possible), Dirt Track (time trials), Pursuit (the player chases after someone), Survival (four super cops chase after the player), Lose the Cop (the player must avoid a cop tailing on them), and Drive About (just drive about the city and admire the scenery).

There is also a full Director mode, allowing to place cameras to catch the best moments in the custom replay file.

Spellings

  • DRIVER ~潜入!カーチェイス大作戦~ - Japanese spelling
  • Driver: אתה איש ההגה - Hebrew spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (PlayStation version)

70 People · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 67 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 121 ratings with 5 reviews)

Huge Areas, High Speed, and 3 Cities.

The Good
This game's lovely areas are great to drive on, the sounds are great. There are several game modes like Undercover, Take a ride, and Survival. The story is great, you are Tanner, an Undercover cop who must work undercover to find out the secret of the most fearsome Mob Boss in America.

Contrary to other driving games you can drive in parks, alleyways, and wreck almost everything!

The Bad
The graphics are extremely dissappointing, your turns are very sharp, making the car very difficult to control.

The Bottom Line
This game is NOT a traditional driving game, this game is extremely violent, you will have to destroy several objects, and completely destroy cars, you will also need to maintain your car (don't damage it too much or your game will end), keep away from cops, and drive decently.

Windows · by Jim Fun (207) · 2001

Initially a lot of fun, then you start to notice all the flaws

The Good
The chase are a real blast, lots of authentic-looking streets to drive through, excellent driving model, ability to save chase replays and edit them with the "director's mode", third-party mission editor

The Bad
Brain-dead AI for the cops, infinite cop respawn, some extremely frustrating missions with too-tight time limits, too many missions based on time limits, some multi-part missions with no end in sight and carry-over damage, cars are too "bouncy", strange physics bugs that sends cars flying hundreds of feet into the air when colliding near a wall, ridiculously hard initial "test", virtually impossible final mission, absolutely NO multi-player (not even modem or split-screen), lousy voice acting and goofy looking movies, console-style design that has absolutely no concept of a "computer mouse", only 8 replays slots and 8 save slots... the list goes on and on.

The Bottom Line
Driver is a game where you drive through game-ized versions of Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, avoiding cops and fulfill objectives. With plenty of streets to drive on, you can pick your own route, cut through grass, drive on sidewalks, drive on wrong side of the street... Anything goes, just don't get caught! (i.e. have your car smashed into immobility by the cops) While there's a backstory about you being an undercover cop trying to track down a conspiracy (which eventually involves the FBI, plenty of local police, the Mafia, and the President of US), the action is in driving, and just driving. You get messages on your answering machine in a hotel room, and by choosing which message you answer, you go on different missions. Most missions are time-based. A typical mission: Go to location X in 2:30 seconds, no cops following you at the end! The cars look authentic, and the streets look pretty good (if a bit repetitive), but all the streets intersect at right angles, making this part look MUCH worse than Midtown Madness. Though you'll be driving so fast you'll hardly notice. The cars you drive are 70's muscle cars, though they all have automatic transmissions and they handle not that differently.

The problem with Driver is the developers ported this from Sony Playstation, and they did a very lazy job. The game does not use the mouse in any way even though it would make sense to use that in the main menu (you have to use keyboard). The options are console-style "hit left-right to toggle through the choices" when it makes more sense to use "drop-down" on a PC. The initial version does not even allow mixed keyboard and joystick controls!

Driver could have been THE cop chase game with a bit more effort like ability to export chase movie to AVI, use mouse in the interfaces (including director's mode when editing the chases), ability to bypass missions after X attempts, little touches like that. As is, it's a game with great premise but lousy execution that should have deserved better on a PC.

Windows · by Kasey Chang (4598) · 2000

Insanely difficult, there's other carfish in the sea

The Good
The concept is really cool. You are a getaway driver for the mob. Through objective-based gameplay, you take on a good variety of missions carting people around, performing insane car chases while taking care of business.

After all is said and done, you can go back and review your chases from different angles, which is a really nice touch. You can also select a variety of locations to just cruise around before embarking on the game's main mission.

The Bad
The controls are completely obnoxious to the point of unplayability. Almost every turn results in a burnout, which is particularly obnoxious seeing as the police will pursue you without fail for having done absolutely nothing wrong and will attempt to obliterate you into a pulp if you don't frantically scramble away, which, for this reviewer anyway, typically resulted in a spectacular crash.

While there's a good array of missions, nearly all of them involve driving person x from point a to point b, and take several attempts. Many of the missions are timed, which means you're not allowed to deliberate on how to avoid a spectacular end by strategizing a method around the abominable controls.

That's only if you can make it out of the gate -- Driver's training mission is mandatory to complete before you can begin the main mission, and requires you to pull off nearly every stunt in the game's repertoire to perfection; something that would normally take time, or that you would learn along the way in a balanced game. Driver is the opposite of balanced.

The Bottom Line
Driver is a cool in theory, but provides neither the sandbox wonder of Grand Theft Auto nor the maniacal entertainment of Carmageddon. If you're looking for a cool driving/crime sim, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a cool replay function to bide your time between Dukes of Hazzard reruns, look no further.

PlayStation · by jTrippy (58) · 2010

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Listed twice? Ƒreddƴ (5833) Sep 7, 2010
Driver returns Daniel Saner (3503) Jun 15, 2010

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Driver appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Advertisement

In the UK, Antonio Fargas took part of the advertising campaign for Driver (Antonio Fargas is best know for playing Huggy Bear in the classic 70s TV series Starsky And Hutch, which partly inspired the creation of the game)

Influence

  • The game was partially inspired by the 1993 film Driver by Eoin Moore.
  • It seems that Driver was heavily inspired by the 1978 movie The Driver, starring Ryan O' Neal, and Bruce Dern. The most notable is the first level of the game, taken from a scene in the film in which "The Driver" has to prove his skill to some gangsters. Some of the crash sound effects used for the game, also came from the film itself.

Physics

The physics engine in Driver seems to occasionally have hiccups when the player has collisions in close quarters. The player's car (or other cars) will fly up hundreds of feet into the air. See screenshots for some samples.

Awards

  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2000 - Best Racing Game in 1999
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/2000 – Best Racing Game in 1999

Information also contributed by DOS Boot, Grant McLellan and Indra was here.

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Driver / Driver 2
Released 2004 on PlayStation
Pro Race Driver
Released 2002 on PlayStation 2, Windows, 2003 on Xbox
Driver '76
Released 2007 on PSP
Trainz: Driver Edition
Released 2006 on Windows
Driver: Renegade
Released 2011 on Nintendo 3DS
Driver: San Francisco
Released 2011 on Xbox 360, Windows, 2012 on Macintosh
Zombie Driver HD
Released 2012 on Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3...
Construction Site Truck Driver
Released 2017 on iPad, iPhone, Android
Emergency Driver: City Hero
Released 2017 on iPhone, 2017 on iPad, 2021 on Nintendo Switch

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 309
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Thomas Backman.

PSP, PlayStation 3 added by Charly2.0. iPhone added by Mister-k81. PS Vita added by GTramp. Macintosh, webOS added by Kabushi. PlayStation added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: Kasey Chang, Foxhack, DreinIX, Zaibatsu, Duduzets, Patrick Bregger, Victor Vance, FatherJack, Deleted.

Game added October 15, 1999. Last modified March 6, 2024.