Home

News

Reviews

Games

Hardware

Downloads

Driver: Parallel Lines

User Rating:

ESRB: Blood,Drug Reference,Intense Violence,Partial Nudity,Sexual Themes,Strong Language
Publisher: UbiSoft
Genre(s): Action / Adventure
Home Page: http://www.ubi.com/UK/Games/Info.a...

Game index

System Requirements

Review

Preview

Screenshots

Downloads

By: Jarno Kokko Jul 09, 2007

Well, it's a weak GTA clone

When summing everything up, this simple conclusion cannot be avoided - Driver: Parallel Lines is sadly just a weak and lifeless GTA clone. It fails to improve the formula in any meaningful way, and the storyline is not exactly impressive. GTA Vice City and San Andreas both managed to score lots of brownie points for their humorous over-the-top storylines. In comparison, Driver takes itself far too seriously, trying hard to be tough and gritty - and promptly fails. Technical shortcomings caused by PS2-limited development don't exactly help when everyone is drooling over Grand Theft Auto IV video clips.

Driver: Parallel Lines does somewhat grow on you over time, and there are some fun missions here and there, but it's pretty hard to stay interested in such a decisively average title. Recommended only for those who desperately need another GTA-style game to pass the time before GTA IV appears.

Every alley seems to be littered with random objects - fun when trying to lose the cops.

Cars deform on collisions and even blow up to pieces pretty nicely.

Summary of YouGamers Hardware Testing

The publisher of this game state the following specifications for their minimum and recommended requirements:

Component	Publisher's Minimum	Publisher's Recommended
Processor	Intel Pentium 4 2000 MHz / AMD Athlon XP 2000+	Intel Pentium 4 3400 Mhz / AMD Athlon 64 3500+
Memory	256 MB	512
Graphics Card	64MB DirectX 9.0c compatible supporting Shader Model 1.1	256MB DirectX 9.0c compatible supporting Shader Model 2.0
Graphics Card Example	GeForce 3 64MB	ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB
Free Disk Space	5 GB	5 GB
Net Link	N/A	N/A

To learn more about how YouGamers performs its hardware testing, click here. Through our extensive gameplay and hardware testing across the full spectrum of PC configurations, YouGamers suggests that one should use the following guidelines for an appropriate minimum and recommended setup:

Component	YouGamers Minimum	YouGamers Recommended
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 3000+ / Intel Pentium 4 3000 MHz	AMD Athlon 64 3500+ / Intel Pentium 4 3400 MHz
Memory	1024 MB	1024 MB
Graphics Card	ATI Radeon X1300 128MB / NVIDIA GeForce 6600 128MB	ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB / NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS 512MB
Free Disk Space	5 GB	5 GB
Net Link	N/A	N/A

Scores

To learn more about our scoring methodology, please click here.

Gameplay	78	Storyline aims for "gritty" and "tough", but falls flat. Driving works acceptably well and gameplay on foot is not quite as terrible as in Driv3r, but playability still has some issues. Cops can get truly annoying.
Graphics	82	Art is uneven. You can pull very nice screenshots if you pick your spot carefully, but there is excess copy-pasting of textures and buildings - most likely due to the console origins of the title. Some textures have received facelifts, but models are still PS2-grade. Cutscenes are animated and modeled remarkably well.
Audio	65	Uninspiring - music ranges from bad to passable without any customization options (no radio stations, sorry) and effects are unremarkable.
Technology	69	Can get slow with SM2.0 effects without looking that impressive, but on the other hand does scale pretty well for midrange systems if you turn off the SM2.0 shaders. Cutscenes have annoying compression artifacts.

OVERALL

Driver: Paraller Lines is a nice diversion if you absolutely crave for a GTA-lookalike before the next GTA game pops on the PC. The port to PC has received a bit more attention than the usual quick hack job, but it's still a console port of a fairly average game.

If you would like to comment on this review or discuss the game further, please head over to our discussion board - please click here (registration not required).