Driver, released in 1999 by Reflections Interactive and published by GT Interactive, is a game built on one fantasy: the getaway driver in a 1970s movie. It shipped for the original PlayStation and Windows, later reached Mac, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3, and it is remembered because it understood that fantasy better than anything before it.
Tanner
You play John Tanner, an NYPD officer and former racing driver sent undercover by his boss, Lieutenant McKenzie, to find out what a crime syndicate led by Castaldi is planning. McKenzie sends him to Miami to meet a pimp named Rufus. Tanner proves himself to some gangsters in a parking garage, becomes their getaway driver, and works his way up. When Rufus is shot by his girlfriend Jesse, Tanner brings her in and learns the trail leads to San Francisco.
There he meets Castaldi himself and starts working for him directly, alongside Rusty Slater, his old racing rival. He learns Castaldi is tied to Don Hancock, a man running for president. When he suspects Slater is spying on him, he wrecks Slater’s car in a chase and gets him arrested, and the Castaldi family moves on to Los Angeles.
Four Cities
The story is an excuse to drive, and the driving is the game. Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York are each open to you, and the missions are the stuff of chase films: deliver a car without a scratch, run a rival off the road, sit outside a bank with the engine running and get the crew out when the alarm goes off.
The Handling
What made Driver special was weight. The cars lean, slide and bounce, and a handbrake turn through a San Francisco intersection with three police cars behind you feels like something from a film rather than a game. Reflections tuned the physics for drama rather than accuracy, and that was the right call.
Where It Falls Short
The opening test in the parking garage is notorious for good reason. It demands a list of maneuvers on a clock before the game proper begins, and it turned away plenty of players who never saw Miami. The mission structure is repetitive, the cities are empty of anything but traffic and police, and the story, which is more elaborate than it needed to be, is delivered in cutscenes that have not aged well.
The game also punishes damage harshly. A few hard hits and the mission is over, which is realistic and frustrating in equal measure.
The Verdict
Driver is a game about the feeling of a chase, and it gets that feeling right in a way few games have since. Its structure is dated and its opening is cruel. Its best moments are still among the best driving has offered.
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