Before I started playing this, neither the graphical style or the action-adventure genre really appealed to me. A friend had highly recommended this one so I tried it, and I'm so glad I did. I'll never forget the story or the characters in this game. The game plays much like a film. The whole world is carefully crafted to be meaningful & enjoyable the whole way through. There are a number of mini-games in the game that in themselves are very enjoyable. If I have to say anything bad about it, it's that I experienced a couple of bugs in the game. I resolved both of them using the powers of teh internets, but one of the bugs was actually a show stopper for a while. It required me patching the game and applying a fix to my save games. Don't let that put you off playing it though; Some of the best films have as many goofs as the worst ones. I'm very much looking forward to playing the upcoming sequel.
I thoroughly enjoyed Driver 1 and 2 on the Playstation. They had open environments, challenging and cinematic cop chases, all set in an immersive environment which brought back fond memories of early films like "Bullit" with fun, Hollywood-esk chase scenes. Driver 4 (Parallel Lines) and Driver 3 were not enjoyable for me. They added they ability to use firearms, ride motorcycles and wonder around on foot. Unfortunately it feels alot like the developers aimed for a GTA-like game and didn't have the resources to pull it off. The graphics look strangely warped, the vehicle physics feel wrong and the story line has very little pull. I think, had they focused their efforts (and I'm assuming limited resources) purely on further refining their original formula of cars, cops and robbers, they could have produced something really great. But they did not.
This is a high quality game. By that I mean it's stable, has good graphics, a nice size collection of cars & tracks and a reasonable selection of game modes. I personally didn't enjoy the rag doll based game modes where you have to throw the driver a certain distance/direction. Felt a bit like a tech demo to me, to show off their physics engine - which by the way is very impressive! The whole car seems deformable, and the motion, as you steer, is very fluid. The car (and driver) feel very much a part of the environment. I completed the career mode, but it requires persistence. The game starts off quite easy, but all of a sudden gets very difficult and you find yourself having to drive the tracks perfectly to win. To win, the game doesn't really reward the act of smashing into other cars. It's better to just clip them to spin them off or veer them into a tree/building; that way you don't loose your momentum. Flatout 2 is really just an extension of Flatout 1. I can recommend them both. To conclude; if you like muscle cars, arcade-style driving games, drifting around dirt tracks and a challenge, then this game is for you. If you like 2 or more of those things then you should still give it a try.
I followed this for a while before it came out based on the fact it had: 1) Cool grungy deformable muscle cars 2) Offroad dirt tracks and sliding Hollywood style physics. When the game came out I was please to find it had: 1) Cool grungy deformable muscle cars 2) Offroad dirt tracks and sliding Hollywood style physics. It's a very enjoyable game, and having played the 2nd and third version of it, this original remains my favorite. I'd give it 5 stars except for the fact the difficulty curve is a bit wrong. Easy mode is too easy and the modes above get very hard very quickly, causing you to restart the races quite alot. Anyway - I loved playing it and still fire it up even today to have a burn around. Infact the graphics and physics engine don't seem to have aged at all.
