The Gameplay experience has changed much since the original iteration of this game – gone is the focus on driving, now replaced by a focus on a clumsy, action based FPS environment. That’s right, a title that was initially exclusively about driving has now become more based around moving in when need be, taking your shots at those you’re assigned to take down. Unfortunately, the controls for Driv3r are horrifically clunky, and barely suitable for a console. While the business of aiming is difficult in itself (even with the utilization of automatic aim and a mouse), the mechanics of driving and movement are even worse. Nearly all of the games have the worst habit of spinning out if you try to make them turn, yet not a fast sort of spin where you’d lose traction – the slow kind where all hopes of maintaining any speed have been dashed. Worse off is how slow and stupidly Tanner moves. Seeing as how he is incapable of climbing over anything and can manage a measly three inches of height when jumping, it makes it incredibly difficult to get into and out of boats, not to mention jump over obstacles when instructed to. Aside from the jump, run, gun and drive, there’s really nothing else to Driv3r.

While there are a few driving mini-games present within the title, there’s essentially nothing else to do, as you can’t even stop back in your hotel room between missions and take a drive around like you used to be able to, which leaves a certain bitter uncertainty when wondering if a mission was completed, or even if the game was saved. Perhaps the lone grace to Driv3r’s Gameplay is the cunning and intelligent AI – take for example how they reacted in one of the first missions – after I failed it a number of times, I chose to blockade the entrance which the car came through. Sensing the blockade, the fugitive quickly backed out of the lot rather than barreling through, forcing me into yet another unsuccessful chase. Frustrated, I sought to try again, blockading his new escape path, as well as the initial one, prompting him to take a third. Impressive, but frustrating as hell. Moving from the basic and bland Gameplay mechanics, let’s begin to look at the feeble attempts you can make to try and control Tanner’s world.

First and foremost, movement is still controlled by the basic WASD keys, but beyond that, the layout of keys is left largely unexplained, forcing you to quit the game just to check what a certain key will do, often finding it to be un-assigned. To top this off, there are two separate buttons for entering and exiting cars (e and enter for us respectively), along with being able to switch weapons only in one order via the use of the Q key, and holstering or drawing said weapon with tab. It would have been nice for them to allow us to select weapons via the numeric keys, or better yet the scroll wheel, just like everybody else does. On top of these issues, we have the previously mentioned issue of vehicle control mechanics – or to put it most simply the lack of ability to actually drive the bloody things. As was said before, the vehicles are heinously difficult to control, often skidding to a near stop when a turn is taken too tightly by minor degrees. On top of this, while there are apparently over 70 separate vehicles, each with differing handling characteristics, why must they all perform so poorly, topping out at speeds that make the people on the sidewalk look like a bizarre human iteration of the road runner. Simply put, the frustration of trying to get Tanner to do what you want, and the slow, sluggish vehicles simply drain all of the fun that this game could have from it.