When GT Interactive in 1999 for the PlayStation DRIVER brought out, everyone agreed: The game "rocks"! The highly explosive mix of action-racing game, police chases and sheer crash orgy presented a novelty, inspired by diverse action movie classic of the 70s, such as French Connection, Bullitt or the eponymous film Driver. The game was also made for the PlayStation and another selling point for the hardware. Eagerly waiting fans at the obvious sequel, which also appeared a year later, this time under the direction of Infogrames. Unfortunately quickly made disillusionment because DRIVER 2 suffered significant technology weaknesses, particularly annoying slowdowns and Ruckeleien vermiesten the game and also the emissions schwächelten for an extremely unbalanced difficulty. With Driver 3 / Driv3r for PS2 everything should be perfect again, the publisher was now ATARI. But again bugged game mechanics, this time by numerous "walk" missions that had to cope with an ugly Männeken and indisputable surplus target system. Mostly good and exciting level alternated with unbearable frustration missions what DRIV3R again made a half-baked affair. In 2006, then still "Parallel Lines" (PS2) was nachgeschoben, but this was the ambiguous reputation of the Driver series no longer avenge. And now this: After Ubisoft acquired the rights and Reflections Driver: San Francisco, developed in-house, we have now to deal with the first Driver offshoot for the PS3. And the game has it all! After 12 years Driver SF closes almost seamlessly DRIVER (1), and so I honestly had not expected. The main innovation is this time is the "Shift" function, the disembarkation is no longer possible (nor necessary). During the hunt for an escaped felon Tanner and his colleague have a traffic accident, Tanner falls outside the sequence into a coma. And here the absurd and sensual story or the "trick" begins. Located Tanner Like a near-death experience in the hospital lying out of his body and hovers over the city from now on, where he has the ability to in any vehicle or in any mission on the map beamen / to "shifting" and control of vehicles to accept or to start the story / chapter. Whether represents the further course of the story only as a dream or Tanner actually Kriminalfälle triggers his coma state out is for the player does not appear, but also does not matter, because it just is just about the new game mechanics, which allows at any time , even during the emissions to change the vehicles. Kinda cool. The chapters are varied and entertaining, and there is plenty of outside activities such as stunts and tests of courage to do, in turn, bring the experience and money to buy vehicles and extras can. The handling is top notch and is the feeling of DRIVER (1) damn near, accompanied by a tangy 70s soundtrack and first-class voice actors for the main roles as Benjamin Volz (Keanu Reeves, Charlie Sheen, David Duchovny) or David Nathan (Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Val Kilmer). Bright Lights, thank Ubisoft for as a competent language setting! Although the competition in the racing game sector is nowadays massively, DRIVER is again and still a class of its own and was supposed to be more than the tip, which is the game at the moment still or again.
