Driver 3

[the shape]

Im so going to complete this game, its my mission from god himself and im then going to mail the f***er back to reflections and ask for a written apology.

If this quote doesn't make it into the next issue of gamesTM, I shall resign my post. This whole unsavory debacle distilled and refined into thirty perfect words.

In the record industry, payola is commonly acknowledged. As such at least it may be discussed, warned of, acted upon.

[martTM]

If this quote doesn't make it into the next issue of gamesTM, I shall resign my post.

We'll try... maybe if revised genocide writes a slightly less profane letter on the subject, it'll get printed.

EDIT: Or you could just put it in your column.

[revisedgenocide]

hehehe i do my best I was quite vexed yesterday so much so that my girlfriend was wondering why i was stabbing the keys so violently as i typed.
Driver 3 is the worst game of this generation, not because its play mechanics are worse than any other games. Ive played games which are much less enjoyable. Its the fact that Driver 3 could have been very good which is a real kick in the teeth. Most rubbish games show no sign of something greater but driver 3 at times does and thats what is so dissapointing.

[PeteJ]

EGM have given it an 8.5. Crazy! At least IGN and Gamespot have given it average scores.

I can't wait for some sort of Atari response over this shambles. They'll probably announce 4river, the sequel to "the critically acclaimed best selling ****-up".

[Wools]

Driver 3 is the worst game of this generation, not because its play mechanics are worse than any other games. Ive played games which are much less enjoyable. Its the fact that Driver 3 could have been very good which is a real kick in the teeth. Most rubbish games show no sign of something greater but driver 3 at times does and thats what is so dissapointing.

It's disapointing yes. Everyone seems to be saying this (Apart from a few inderviduals) but does disapointing mean crap? No it does not. Although GTA Vice city offers more freedom and a lock on for targets, almost all of the critacism applied to Driver 3 could be used word for word as negative points for the 3D incarnations of Grand theft auto.

IMO Driver 3 is excellent. No game offers such big cities that have a real life flavour to them with excellent handling cars and the possibilties to have cinema like car chases through them. In this respect no other game can touch it.

That's my two cents. :-)

[JibberX]

So.... who liked Stuntman?

[revisedgenocide]

It's disapointing yes. Everyone seems to be saying this (Apart from a few inderviduals) but does disapointing mean crap? No it does not. Although GTA Vice city offers more freedom and a lock on for targets, almost all of the critacism applied to Driver 3 could be used word for word as negative points for the 3D incarnations of Grand theft auto.

IMO Driver 3 is excellent. No game offers such big cities that have a real life flavour to them with excellent handling cars and the possibilties to have cinema like car chases through them. In this respect no other game can touch it.

That's my two cents. :-)

Its a fair point though i completely disagree with what ive put up in bold. On foot in any of this generations gta games isnt perfect but its no where near the travesty that it is in driver 3. Theres no hand to hand fighting at all and the y axis is pretty limited so you cant shoot people above a certain height or below a certain depth. Theres no lock on which would be fine if the aiming wasnt over sensitive and as ive said the AI is extremely awfull and buggy. On the hotel level theres a bit where your on a roof and you can look down at a lower roof and theres no one on it. Walk forward a few steps and they spawn almost all around you. The citys are huge but so far ive found many dead spaces for example ares in parks with only one entrance and exit and alls there is is just one bloke walking around in circles in it. You spend 3 minutes walking to the other end to see if theres anything there and your greeted with a waist high wall tanner cant jump over.
Id agree that the driving itself can be quite fun but the framerate dips and odd pop up distract from that at times. Director mode can be quite amusing and some of the clips ive taken from xbl are quite funny too . They dont make up for an extremely poor game however.

[the shape]

No other game offers this.

http://www.iguides.net/driv3r/video/nowayitsaflyingcar.mov

[macosx]

Tanner ingame looks like Simon Cowell.

[revisedgenocide]

Im finding some quite humorous bugs too which goes some way to making up for the outlay. Though not quite in the way reflections wanted.
I was walking along in nice and heard a couple of splashes. I look in the water to see several people had decided to jump in. It ranks as one of the most surreal things ive ever seen watching them slowly drift away in the current, watching the fading sun set and making no attempt to swim back to shore.
There are also some seriously disturbed people on xbl judging by some of the replays ive seen.

[RLench]

lol, that sounds brilliant (or incredibly lame from Reflection's POV)

Im so going to complete this game, its my mission from god himself and im then going to mail the f***er back to reflections and ask for a written apology.

If you do this, you become an instant Internet legend for pissed-off gamers around the world Seriously you have got to do this!

[Concept]

I thought some of you peeps might be interested in this...

A thread being dissected over at Future Publishing's Gamesradar forum, where it seems there has been an avid dissection over why the game's been given the scores it has. Suggestions of bribery at a single-format publication?

Why, I never...

Sources: http://forum.gamesradar.com/viewtopi...er=asc&start=0

http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_posts.php?forum_id=1&thread_id=14548&start=30

Well then. Our review score for Driv3r seems to have created quite a stir and with half of you baying for blood and demanding a response from XBW, I thought I'd brave the forums. Ulp.

First off I'd like to totally refute the suggestion that magazines, and specifically XBW, take bribes - monetary or otherwise - to inflate review scores. Sure we might get the odd T-shirt sent to us or a pint bought by a PR but never, in 4 years of working at Future, have I ever given a game an inflated score because a/ I've been ordered to or b/ I've been thrown a bung. Sure I've over marked games - 9/10 for MOH: Rising Sun in OPS2 I will freely admit was a grave error of judgement but an honest mistake. But that's another story entirely.

Further to this, the allegation that there is some grand conspiracy between ourselves and Atari - 'you give it a nine, we'll lob a sticker on the box and a page in the manual' - is again wrong. The sticker was agreed on only after the review had been written and sent to press.

So to Driv3r. It's a great game and we stand by the review. Our staffie played it to completion and loved it, as did the man who wrote our tips guide. However, with regard to the technical issues raised on this forum then you may have a point. Because of the long lead times for magazines and the fact that it was an exclusive review, the code we reviewed from was not final. We were made aware of some bugs in the game and were promised that these would be sorted by the time of release. I cannot comment on whether these were fixed or not but I have an unopened boxed copy of the game on my desk and will endeavour to check it out this evening - there's been too much footie on for serious gaming sessions at home! If it transpires that what was supposedly going to be fixed wasn't, then we will speak to Atari. But like I say, can't comment on that yet. That said, the old PS1 games were greeted with rapturous applause and they were pretty ropy technically in places - slowdown and pop-up aplenty - but had the killer gameplay that we believe has carried over to the latest Driver incarnation.

So with this in mind perhaps a 9 was a little too enthusiastic. Perhaps. But for gamescentral to score it a 3 is just plain rubbish. A 3, or even a 6, would suggest that the game is fundamentally broken and the gameplay offers little if anything in the way of enjoyment. This is simply not true, far from it. If we were to review from the boxed copy and found that all the technical issues had not been resolved then I believe we still would have scored it an 8 or 9 but again, this is pure conjecture and I'll comment when I've played it.

At the end of the day, Bob, much of this is surely down to personal opinion and taste. Can I point you in the direction of OXM's Shadow Ops review in their current issue? This is in no way a personal attack on Gavin Ogden (we'll leave the petty bitching to Xbox Gamer) but 8/10 is, in our opinion, a very very high score for the game. We've only just gone to print with our review so I wont give out our score but I only mention this to illustrate that games, like most things in life, are so often down to the reviewer's/gamer's taste. An another example - I'm currently having a heated discussion with the boss about Leilani and whether she's hot to trot or not. She is, he's entirely wrong, I am entirely right.

Right, I'll stop rambling on now. Hope this goes someway to answering your points. I await responses with extreme trepidation...

Please note this post is speaking for XBW and not PSM2.

Nick Ellis
Deputy editor, XBW

Gamecentral's reply.

It's not rubbish. It's what we genuinely think. We think it's fundamentally broken, and it contains no enjoyment.

You don't agree? Fine. But that doesn't make our opinion rubbish. Please don't bounce off us as a way to try and justify your own scoring.

Cheers,
Steven Bailey
Editor
GameCentral

P.S. A 6/10 for no enjoyment and fundamental flaws? Blimey.

And finally this from the Eurogamer forums...

Having worked in the PR dept at Atari, there's no doubt in my mind that 'money changed hands' in some form or other. It's usually in the form of 'up our score and we'll take out more ads in your mag next month'. Not a direct 'bung' as such as the money is going towards the advertising.

Been there. Seen that. Left the company in disgust.

There are times when I really love the honesty of the game industry.

[Concept]

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=55870

Ouch. A long and detailed review that completely hammers home the skank this game is claimed to be. I'm half-tempted to pick up Driver 3 now to actually see how awful it is for myself and discover what all the fuss is about.

If I do, I think it'll be the first time I've ever done that with a game.

[revisedgenocide]

Too many game journalists are under the illusion that they are actually in the games industry. Think i read that in edge once, or it may have been on this site .
Its a sorry, sorry state of affairs and personally speaking its the corruption within games publishing and journalism which does more harm to gamings credibility than anything else. Dont get me wrong corruption can be found anywhere, its just so shocking to see how its so openly done within gaming mags. As if all gamers are a bunch of retarded nerds.

edit/ forgot to say that my will finally buckled and after getting 3/4 of the way through the game i decided my life was in fact worth living and decided to part ex driv3r for Disgea. I lost 15 quid but quite frankly id have paid Game to take it off my hands anyway.

[Concept]

Edit: I'm getting slightly off-topic here so this will be my last post discussing the 'issues' surrounding Driver 3 in this thread.

revisedgenocide -

That's my point. It's not as even though corruption is subtle in the majority of videogame journalism.

A large portion of the media quite rightly deserves to be thought of as a rather unfunny joke by those in other entertainment mediums. And that in turn impacts on how the industry at large is perceived.

Driver 3 is just another example ramming home how far coverage on the videogame market has to go before it can be considered with any shread of respect.

It's a truly bleak thought when you think about it. Videogaming has been around for roughly 30 years now, yet overall, the standard of journalism doesn't really seem to have improved.

This is a slightly unfair comparison, but could we say the same for film?