Story

• The main mode of the game is the story mode which is called “Undercover”.
• Like in the previous games you still play the role of Tanner
• This time, Tanner goes undercover to break up a new car thief ring in Miami.
• The story unfolds through a series of missions, with some very good looking cut-scenes in-between.
• The production values of the cut-scenes are very well done, with excellent cinematography and voice acting.
• While the cut-scenes are interesting to watch, the storyline is a little jumpy  when it comes to character development.
• It seems like a new character or bad guy is introduced every other scene.
• Some are insignificant and are dealt with right away while others hang around for the majority of the game.
• You might not realize who the important characters are when you first meet them.
• The story is full of the expected betrayals, double crossings, twists and turns but it wasn’t really integrated smoothly into the gameplay so it became hard to follow at times.
• You can spend a half an hour trying to complete a chase scene and then forget why you were chasing them to begin with.
• By the end of the game, the story will have taken you on a journey through three large cities:
• Miami, USA
• Niece, France
• Istanbul, Turkey
• Overall, besides the relative choppiness of the flow of the story, the story is one of the best parts of the game.

Gameplay

• The gameplay boils down to a mission based system where missions can be further broken down into chase scenes and some run-and-gun ground missions.
• Most of the driving missions require you to follow car ‘x’ without falling too far behind.
• Most chases only end when you get to a scripted part of the map. At this point a small cinematic will play and either the mission will turn into on foot action or the mission will end.
• The car chases require a fairly high level of driving skill.
• Any mistake like hitting another car or making the wrong turn can cause failure.
• One of the most frustrating parts about driving is hitting the light poles.
• The cities have street signs and fencing that can be busted through, but the street poles will stop a car on a dime.
• In retrospect, this is realistic, but it just doesn’t seem to match the rest of the game’s frantic pace and destruction.
• One positive aspect of the chase missions is that the computer AI usually takes a handful of different paths to each goal, so if you fail and restart, the chase is not always going to follow the same route.
• However, fail often, and eventually you will know all the possible paths for a chase mission.
• It was disappointing that most chase missions barely had any other driving concerns.
• In previous games, a goal would be to wreck your opponent with your car.
• In this game, your opponent’s car is like a brick.
• They will plow through all traffic that gets in their way, but won’t even spin when you slam into their rear quarter panel.
• Most of the time it’s best to stay at a safe distance behind the car until you make it to the end of the chase.
• In the old games there was also a heavier focus on avoiding cops when going from point A to point B during missions to make some sort of pickup or drop.
• There are cops in Driv3r but, they rarely become a factor to the point where you have to take alternate routes just to avoid them.
• Occasionally a mission would call for a road block or two, but even those were pretty easy to deal with.
• There are a couple of more unique driving missions.
• In one you shoot following pursuers from the back of a van as the AI drives.
• Another has you stealing cars and driving them onto a moving truck before the moving truck can get to it’s destination.
• There were even a couple missions that included driving a boat or motorcycle.
• All the cars that you could drive did have subtle handling differences.
• Speed of the cars was one major factor.
• Another was that the cars also seemed to have different levels of oversteer, meaning that some would spin out easier than others.
• Some parts of missions will have you shooting your way out of trouble on foot.
• The ground missions are in third player perspective ala Grand Theft Auto.
• There were two ways to aim your weapons while on foot.
• In the option menu, you can turn on aim locking or leave it manual.
• Controlling your character was annoying.
• The right thumbstick is used to look around and change the camera angle.
• The left thumbstick moves Tanner, but the camera won’t center behind Tanner, so you will often just be sidestepping.
• At times it feels like sliding more than walking or running.
• Tanner can jump, but he gives a whole new meaning to “White Men Can’t Jump.”
• Tanner can also swim, but when it comes to scaling a two foot wall, he has no ability to climb.
• Enemy AI during ground missions was not very good and can be broken into a few different types.
• First is the enemy that stands in one place and just shoots at you.
• Another enemy will do the same but will add ducking (usually behind cover) before standing to shoot.
• A third enemy will run out from behind cover, shoot, run back to the cover and repeat.
• The next kind of enemy will charge when you get near it.
• Finally, one of the more sophisticated enemies shoots and then performs a jump-and-roll to try to avoid fire before standing up and repeating.
• When you do get an enemy in your sights, you will hit him as long as the target icon turns red.
• Unfortunately this means even if you can see him through the corner of a wall or something you will still be able to hit and be hit by him.
• Likewise, even if you can see an enemy around a corner, and it looks like the target icon is lined up, if it’s not red, then you’ll just hit an invisible wall.
• Some of the ground missions will provide you with ally AI support.
• Unfortunately you’ll spend more time trying to save the AI allies than getting help from your AI friends.
• This results in some frustrating gameplay.
• Your “teammates” will often run ahead and just stand in the line of fire until they die, forcing you to have to restart.
• In the end, the gameplay is hampered by the lackluster foot missions, which detract from what has always been a driving focused game.