Driver

Driver is a driving action game developed by Reflections Interactive (now known as Ubisoft Reflections) which is also the developer of Destruction Derby. The game was released in 1999 on the PC, Mac, Playstation, Game Boy Color and is still available on Playstation Network.

There are 4 cities in which you can drive: Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. The first 2 cities are available from the beginning, but you have to unlock LA and NY in Undercover (the story mode).

Your name is Tanner, and you’re a NYPD detective. You're send on an undercover mission and you have to infiltrate the mob. You get some missions from local gangsters in each city while climbing your way up in the mob. I'll skip the story until the last mission, because this is the most epic one. The mob orders you to kill the President, but you refuse to do it and try to bring him to safety instead. You have to drive the President to the other side of New York while being followed by the police and the mob. The mob probably found out what you’re doing and the police thinks your trying to kidnap the President. This mission is freaking hard, because you’re constantly being attacked by mob or police cars and there is no way of escaping them. I played this game on the Playstation and you can’t change the police difficulty like on the PC. You have to try this mission for 20 times or more before you succeed when you're playing fair, as in a non-cheating way.

But when you succeed you’ll get some cheats to your disposal, like invincibility or mini cars. You can use these cheats in ‘Take a Ride’ where you can drive in one of the 4 cities in day or night, except for Los Angeles, where you can only drive around at night. Besides ‘Take a Ride’ there are also a couple of minigames. These minigames are Getaway (you’re being followed by 1 police car and you have to lose him as quick as possible), Survival (you’re being followed by 4 invincible police cars and you have to survive as long as possible), Pursuit (you have to pursuit another car and take him down. You win when the other car’s damage bar is full), Cross Town Checkpoint (you have to drive past a couple of checkpoints as fast as possible), Trail Blazer (you have to drive past all red triangles in time, when you get past 1 triangle you get some extra time) and Dirt Track (you can practise your skills or drive a time trial on 4 tracks)

The graphics of this game are, to Playstation 1's standards, very good! The damage of cars is visualised well. When it's raining the lights coming from the cars are reflected on the streets. If you've got the Playstation version you have to run this game on your Playstation (if you still have it, of course), and not have it run on a PS2 or PS3, because the quality of the game drops if you do so.

The soundtracks of this game are amazing. If these soundtracks weren’t in the game it wouldn’t be as much fun as it is now. It really adds an extra dimension.

There is 1 funny glitch in this game. When a car (which is a police car most of the time) is laying on his side, you have to hit it on the bottom or top. When you hit it on the bottom, the car launches into the air and when you hit the top, you're the one going on a sightseeing tour in air. After playing Alex Kidd I really cheered up when playing this game again. You have to try this game out, it really is a classic.