Reviewed: May 29, 2007
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Ubisoft

Developer
Sumo Digital

Released: May 8, 2007
Genre: Racing Action
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Mature

8
8
9
8
8.3

Supported Features:

You play Ray, a stereotypical grease monkey from the mid-70’s complete with surplus Army jacket and red Rambo bandana, making him look more like a displaced Vietnam vet than the next great getaway driver. He teams up with Slink, the afro sporting, jive-ass talking pimp who has more 70’s black flavor than a case of Colt 45.

Slink is the “brains” (something has to be under a fro that size), and Ray is the muscle and the man behind the wheel of more than 40 fully customizable vehicles, for more than 20 missions spread across six chapters taking you all over a massive and accurate reproduction of New York City. Your ultimate goal; to establish your rep and make enough cash to impress Zhou, the head of the Chinese Mafia, and father of the girl of your dreams, Chen-Chi. Ho's before bro's...

The game does offer open-ended exploration and a huge assortment of side missions, but this is something you must invoke, taking you outside the narrative for some pure driving and exploration. I’m almost ashamed to admit that it took me until Chapter 3 to realize this. I was seeing all these “tokens” floating around city, but the missions were never allowing me the time to actually collect them. I finally figured out that by hitting the Triangle in the map screen I could pick a section of the city and explore at my leisure.

The first thing that struck me in the story mode is just how original some of the missions were. After playing more than a half-dozen GTA games I was sure nothing was left that could surprise or impress me, but Driver ’76 has you doing clever things like jacking an ambulance delivering a heart transplant and delivering the heart to a “new buyer” before the ice melts. Another mission has you luring a rival gang into chasing you as you drive into the underground parking garage of the NYPD then trying to escape yourself, as the alarm sounds and the gates start to shut.

Another cool idea that manifests itself in several missions is the tow truck. You can actually drive this truck around, back into cars, hitch them up, and tow them to a new destination. Naturally, you’ll use this to jack several cars in a mission not too far from the script of “Gone in 60 Seconds”, but there are even more clever uses like delivering a car to a rival’s mansion packed with explosives, or sneaking a duplicate car into a Latino neighborhood so you can replace it with a car that is already there and loaded with drugs.

There are even some race missions thrown in, one of which is extremely original in that you all start off in your own cars, with the object being a specific (and rare) car hidden somewhere in the city. You must race to the car, get in it, and drive it back to the starting line without trashing it. Naturally, once you get in the car, the opposition will try to ram you off the road and destroy your prize.

Perhaps one of my favorite missions is playing chauffer to a husband and wife team of assassins. You’ll drop one of them off to make their hit then drive their spouse to a second target then drive back to pick up the first. You’ll repeat this process three or four times, all under strict time constraints and possible pursuit. When their final target escapes in his car it’s up to you to chase him down and ram him off the road.

As the name might imply, you’ll spend most of your time behind the wheel. Out of the 27 missions I think I actually got out of my car and shot people three…maybe four times. A handy auto-locking target mode makes strafing easy, and none of the on-foot shootouts were remotely challenging. You can also lean out the window of your current ride and fire on other cars, although this usually attracts the unwanted attention of the cops.

As with all Driver games, the cops play their part in the game, although they don't seem to be as smart or aggressive as they have been in past games. They are quick to engage in pursuit but are just as quick to break it off if you can put enough distance between them or break their line of sight with a quick turn down a narrow alley. Once you hear the radio say, "We've lost the suspect" it's just a matter of time and avoiding their vision cones, conveniently displayed on the mini-map, before the heat is off.

You won’t be driving all the time. A few missions put you in the back of a truck using machine guns and a grenade launcher to defend yourself against a seemingly endless stream of enemy cars. The clever thing here is that you can target the car, passenger, or driver. By taking out the driver you eliminate the other two. Things get a bit more dangerous when they start coming after you in semi-trucks and giant bulldozers.

Some missions might require you to drive a specific car but most allow you to pick from any vehicle in your growing garage. As you complete each mission you are awarded cash, cars, and other unlockable bonuses. Since you don’t really need to flash your cash to earn the favor of Chen-Chi you can spend it on vehicle upgrades like shocks, springs, brakes, nitro, and body mods. These upgrades are usually just diversionary and aren’t required to complete any of the missions. I didn’t even mess with them until the story was over and I was just working on completing the game.

It won’t take you very long to finish the story mode, and then you can move on to the side missions, which can easily take you just as long, if not longer, to complete. These include all sorts of missions of various difficulty levels as noted by a star ranking when you highlight them on the map. You can race cars on twisty tracks, enter demolition derbies, drive a taxi, or collect delinquent payments for the local loan shark.

Perhaps the most daunting task is locating and collecting all of the hidden star tokens floating around New York. You’ll spot many of them while driving around in the story missions, but trying to remember where they were once you actually have the time to find them is something else. Plus, some of these are extremely well hidden, like the one in a giant cargo container suspended by a crane over the water at the harbor. You actually have to ramp up at perfect speed and arc through the container, collect the star, and arc over to the opposite dock.

Collecting stars allows you to unlock bonus items like clothing, paint jobs, and other bonus items that can then be swapped around like trading cars using the PSP Wi-Fi. You can also engage in multiplayer events like Street Racing, Carnage, Circuit Racing, or even race for Pink Slips where the winner gets the loser’s ride for use in their own game.

The game graphics are surprisingly good, especially for the city which shows a great deal of variety and non-repeating textures as well as a lot of original architecture, especially for all those landmarks that everybody is already familiar with. It can get downright claustrophobic flying down the canyons of Manhattan, but then you can find yourself winding through the curvy streets of suburbia or tearing through the warehouse district or crashing though cargo containers down at the pier.

There are more than 40 cars in Driver ’76 and most all of them have some sort of original flair about them. They also all deform and come apart as they take damage from collisions with other traffic and the environment. Damage is not purely visual, so you can expect your top speed to decrease as smoke starts obscuring your vision. Draw distance is really good and there are minimal load times as you drive across the city, usually confined to natural transitions like tunnels and bridges.

Just how good is it? I actually had my PSP hooked into the sound system at work for nearly a full week, and with more than two hours of blues, funk, and 70’s pop, by the time the soundtrack looped I was more than ready for a repeat performance. I still keep this game in my PSP travel case just for the soundtrack.

The voice work is also quite good with quality performances by Ray, Slink, and a very stereotypical cast of villains. Zhou’s Chinese accent is so over-the-top, it fits perfectly with the B-movie presentation, and as already mentioned, Slink has more black flavor than Undercover Brother.

Sound effects are rather limited, mostly car engines, collisions, and gunfire, none of which is terribly impressive, but it all pales in comparison to the rest of the audio presentation. There is some nice radio chatter you’ll get to hear during police chases that is surprisingly accurate to the action.

Naturally, this type of game design is relying on gamers who pride themselves in completion. There is really no benefit to doing any of the non-story gameplay other than personal satisfaction and the off-chance you'll find somebody else with a copy of the game who wants to trade some collectibles. There is support for GameSharing so you can at least challenge other PSP owners to an impromptu race, even if they don’t have their own copy of the game.

Personally, the music alone is worth the price of admission. The game was just a fun and engaging bonus. Perhaps you have to be old enough to remember the 70’s and all of its cultural slang and music, but I’m guessing Driver ‘76 will be a hit with anybody who approaches it with an open mind and modest expectations.