Driver: Parallel Lines has been accepted as the black sheep of the Driver series. While that's not necessarily a bad name, it does mean many fans of previous Driver games were put off by the new gameplay mechanics and lost features D:PL brought to the table. But the core mechanics are here: Parallel Lines offers the best car chases you will find in any driving game at a difficulty reserved for the hardest of the hardcore. AI cars pursue you ferociously at suicidal speeds in the middle of cluttered New York traffic, and making the perfect escape will require pulling some impressive maneuvers that are both fun to execute and just look really cool. Sweetening the deal to the cinematic car chases is a little feature that lets you switch the camera view to a slo-mo cinematic shot of your car in motion at the press of a button, so you can see that narrow miss or epic crash as though you were watching a true 70's action flick. As great as the chases are, however, the game falls short on its new additions to the Driver formula. The city, though impressive in scale and destructible items, just wasn't made to be seen at less than 60 MPH. Pedestrians are lifeless when not dodging traffic and there are no little behavioral gimmicks to make you feel as though you're walking through a real city. Gun combat has been converted from Driv3r's FPS control to a clumsy targeting system, which leaves series fans scratching their heads since Driv3r's shooting worked just fine. The biggest loss is the removal of the Moviemaker mode. Previous Driver games would quite literally let you make small movies out of your adventures with cinematic techniques such as slo-mo, motion blur, camera tracking and even tripod cams that could be placed anywhere. The feature is completely gone in Parallel Lines, which is a true shame since there are some amazing moments in the course of a chase that you may want to watch from different angles, not to mention the moviemaker mode gave previous games loads of replay value to movie buffs. Parallel Lines may not be the best entry in the Driver series. But it's still a Driver game, and as long as it's the only one that GOG has, it should not be missed by anybody with a penchant for white-knuckle car chases and 70's aesthetics.
