Driver Parallel Lines.

We all carry guilty secrets. Hidden, for example, lives on the Isle of Man. My number one guilty secret is probably that I quite enjoyed Driver 3. Yes, it is utterly broken in every way. But that made it all the more hilarious and it did have some wonderful car physics.

It was thus with hope that I preordered the PC version of Driver Parallel Lines some months ago. It was rated quite a bit higher than Driver 3 by critics which I took to be a good sign and I really like New York as a setting, if not as much as I do Nice or Istanbul, both of which were in Driver 3.

The basic premise of Driver Parallel Lines is that you're a small time crook in 70s NY. You get betrayed and are locked up until 2006, where the game resumes and you have to kill all your friends. The idea of two different time periods is a nice one but since the game is so short you'll never really stay in any one period long enough to get in any way attached to the city, making the changes (shops become derelict, buildings replaced etc)a lot less interesting than Reflections clearly wanted them to be.

Part of the problem with Parallel lines is that it manages to be really very bland, despite the potential of the setting. The lead character (named The Kid, which shows how much effort went into him) is just a walking stereotype, as are those around him. The maturity of the Driver series has certainly long gone here, with attempts at GTA style vulgar humour shoehorned into every cutscene to the point where you can almost the devs giggling childishly in the background at the 50^th mention of an expletive. It's not quite as overtly gratuitous as GTA: SA was but it's certainly coming close.

It is actually almost impossible not to compare Parallel Lines to GTA as it apes it in everything it does. It's got glowing markers. It's got side missions (some of which are quite entertaining) and through this endless copying the point of the driver series has somehow been lost. Cars are much arcadeier this time around, with none of the attention to detail they put into the physics and damage of Driver 3. Driver used to be all about racing through city streets with time running out and the police on your tail, but that's long gone. Now it's about lock on shooting and swearing.

To be fair to Reflections there are a couple of really nice features in the game. You now have two wanted bars, one for your car and one for your character. The upshot of this is that if you commit a crime in a car and are able to dump it then you can walk away scot free. If you're seen however then the police will recognize your character and things get a lot trickier until you realise can teleport to your garage at any time when you're not being actively chased which wipes your wanted level completely. A nice feature then, but like much of the game a missed opportunity. Another nice feature is the proliferation of litter on the streets. It's nice to sweep dramatically though it and it adds believability, something that GTA could do with a little more of.

In conclusion then Parallel lines isn't strictly speaking a Bad Game like Driver 3 was, it's just utterly charmless. The odd flashes of innovation are eclipsed by the dullness of the city (despite the awesomeness of New York), the shallowness of the characters and the clichéd plot. As much as it pains me, Drivers biggest fan, to say this the series really has lost the plot entirely.

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