Driver 3

Driver 3 Reflections messed up so bad just to beat Rockstar to the stores. Genre(s): Action Adventure Third-person shooter Platform(s): PlayStation 2 Xbox NA: June 21, 2004 EU: June 25, 2004 Mobile WW: June 23, 2004 Microsoft Windows NA: March 15, 2005 EU: March 18, 2005 Game Boy Advance EU: October 14, 2005 NA: October 25, 2005 Developer(s): Reflections Interactive Velez & Dubail (Game Boy Advance) Sorrent (Mobile) Publisher(s): Atari, Inc. Sorrent (Mobile) Country: United Kingdom France Series: Driver Predecessor: Driver 2 Successor: Driver: Parallel Lines

""This sucks. I mean, how could Refractions mess up so bad? Tanner, you suck ass!""

— Madd Dogg's bodyguard from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas poking fun at the Driver franchise.

Driver 3 (stylized as DRIV3R) is an action-adventure video game, and the third installment in the Driver series, being the sequel to Driver 2. It was developed by Reflections Interactive and published by Atari, Inc. for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Game Boy Advance, and mobile phone. The console versions were released in June 2004, with the PC version being released nine months later. It was involved in a review scandal which became known as "Driv3rgate".

Plot

Undercover FBI agents John Tanner (Michael Madsen) and Tobias Jones (Ving Rhames) are sent to Miami to investigate the "South Beach" cartel headed by Calita Martinez (Michelle Rodriguez), and her associates Lomaz and Bad Hand. When the agents notice the cartel’s recent acquisition of stolen cars, they suspect that they are working for someone else to fulfill a major order. To determine where the deal for the cars will take place, Tanner poses as a wheelman and infiltrates the cartel by recovering a car from a rival gang. After impressing Calita and earning her trust with a series of tasks, Tanner is assigned to assassinate "The Gator" for betraying the cartel.

Bad Qualities

1. Rushing Game Development: Despite being in development for nearly four years, Atari released the game in an unfinished state to get the game on store shelves before Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, resulting in the game (atleast only the console versions) having bugs and glitches. For example infamous glitch in Miami that makes your car fly around the city.
   • In fact, the map itself is unfinished too as you can see tons of holes between buildings when said glitch occurs.
2. Misleading Title: Despite what the title says, most of the entirety of the game is spent on foot, especially during the final mission, which doesn't make sense for a game called Driver. The game also has guns and shootout sections where you engage in firefights, all of this in an attempt to copy the Grand Theft Auto series.
3. The gunplay is very boring and underwhelming, with weak weapon sounds and no feeling of impact.
4. All of Tanner's animations look stiff, awkward and extremely stilted, especially when moving sideways, jumping, moving backward and running.
5. The enemy A.I is subpar, as enemies aren't smart enough to exit their vehicle and shoot you until they get within a certain distance, and whenever they have exited their cars, they're massive pushovers and are pathetically easy to kill, offering no challenge when facing them.
   • They also mostly just stand in place during combat and wait for quite some time before shooting you, making on-foot sections incredibly easy. Any difficulty you face will stem more from the lack of medkits and lack of aiming that make precise targeting harder than it needs to be.
6. The physics can be broken at times, as you'll jump off a ramp and land smoothly one minute, and then land on your car's front and crash the next, despite landing at the same angle as last time.
7. The developers forgot to program cars so that you can't enter them after they've been destroyed. Consequently, you can still get behind the wheel of a car even if it's been blown up.
8. The collision detection is inconsistent as it's unclear what you can and cannot drive through and it can range from unusual (I can drive through that wall? Okay, then...) to confusing (What do you mean light posts and bushes are invincible?).
9. Despite the game featuring 3 cities to explore (Miami, Nice and Istanbul) they are wasted potential as most of the story campaign is story-based and linear.
   • Istanbul particularly looks incredibly bleak, gritty and poverty-stricken compared to its real-life version that's vibrant with life with modern buildings and a modernized road system. Plus, the cars are decades old compared to the more modern cars seen in Miami and Nice, which is questionable. Is Istanbul supposed to be located in Turkey or Cuba?
10. Complete lack of satisfying sound effects (the car's engine doesn't sputter when it's totaled).
11. The PC version's default control scheme is terrible (who thought the 5 key should be the fire button? The mouse buttons literally have no functions mapped to them unless you configure the controls). The driving controls feel like they've been ripped from a 1980s ZX Spectrum game.
    • Luckily it can be fixed using this mod.
12. The GBA port is rather bizarre and contains some really stupid features such as cars being immune to damage (as they bounce off like bumper cars instead) and if you drive into the water, they suddenly explode for no reason.
13. The draw distance is incredibly low which can make driving too difficult.
14. Artificial Difficulty: The chasing sequences are incredibly unfair as just a slight car crash can result in an instant mission failure.
    • The missions "The Chase" and "The Hit" are considered some of the hardest missions in the entire series to the point of being impossible due to rubberband AI and the fact that it relies in little to no room error.
      • Speaking of, "The Hit" was left out of the console versions of the game for reasons unknown and it's exclusive to the PC version.
15. The driving A.I is really impatient, and always honks at you, even when they're turning into your lane or even when you're not going slow, and it can get really annoying.
16. For some reason, the game is rated M for Mature in North America, despite not containing any blood or much swearing. What's ironic is that the PEGI rating is 16+, making this equivalent to a T for a Teen-rated game.
17. Sometimes if your vehicle gets tilted, you can't get out of the car meaning that you're stuck and then eventually explode for no reason, killing you even with Invincibility cheat enabled. Sometimes the vehicle doesn't explode when this occurs, meaning that you must restart the game.
18. The Timmy Vermicellis easter eggs, are nothing but a poor parody of Tommy Vercetti (the protagonist from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City), they are incredibly dangerous and hard to kill and can easily kill you in a couple of shots (even cops are of no match for them), especially given their bullet sponge nature (even with headshots) and explosives are the only way to kill them.
19. There's a complete lack of things to do in the game's "Take a Ride" (free-roam) mode aside from killing people, driving around, and messing with the cops, with the exception of finding secret cars after beating the game, which is needed.
20. This game overall almost killed the Driver franchise entirely.
21. In order to enter and exit vehicles you must press L1/LT when playing PlayStation and Xbox consoles respectively instead of Triangle/Y button which can be confusing and cause a major muscle memory for many people who play Grand Theft Auto or its clones like Saints Row.

Good Qualities

1. If you look past all of its flaws, the overall game can be enjoyable.
2. The cutscenes look good and are impressively animated as it almost feels like watching a crime movie.
3. The voice acting is great.
4. The graphics look great for 2004 standards and still look impressive to this day.
   • The car models and damage modeling specifically look nice.
5. There are mods that can fix some of it's flaws such as: Widescreen Fix (which not only makes the game run on widescreen 16:9 but also fixes the draw distance issue] and Driv3r: Definitive Edition (which further improves the graphics and more).
6. The cars are really fun to drive when the physics work properly.
   • The handling is also realistic.
7. The driving mini-games are fun to play, especially Survival mode.
8. The Game Boy Advance version of Driver 3 is really impressive for handheld standards.
9. While there is nothing to do during free roam, the cities are nice to explore.
10. The story in the game is quite interesting.
11. Despite the terrible default control scheme on PC, the port is vastly superior as it included a bonus mission (despite being extremely difficult) and has less bugs and glitches.

Reception

The console versions of Driver 3 received mixed reviews, with a Metacritic score of 60 for the Xbox version and 58 for the PlayStation 2 version. The PC version, meanwhile, received mainly negative reviews, with a Metascore of 41. The game garnered controversy after it was realized Atari had paid Future Publishing to give both console versions a 9 out of 10. This led to gamers accusing Atari of false advertising and the incident was dubbed "Driv3rgate".

Trivia

• The N-Gage and Nintendo GameCube versions were planned, but ultimately cancelled.
• The game was referenced in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas during "Madd Dogg's Rhyme Book mission by one of the guards.

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