Here's my first impressions after a short while playing Driver 3. All my comments will be comparing it to GTA:Vice City because that's my benchmark - one of my all time favourite games so close in game style that it has to be compared.
First of all:
Graphics
Well in this instance Driver 3 absolutely kicks Vice City's ass. The cars look much better rendered and have proper shadows on the roads. The cars and cities just look so much better than Vice City in all respects and it doesn't have all those weird graphical glitches like buildings and objects that pop-up after you've collided with them or buildings that look all blurry and low-res and then suddenly look close up when you're right beside them.
Driving
I love just driving around Vice City in a fast car doing nothing but enjoying the sites and the free ride option is much the same and driving around Miami or Nice (haven't unlocked Istanbul yet) is much the same. In both games it's fun just to get a fast car and cruise around doing nothing in particular. But in Vice City there seemed to be a much wider range of vehicles in terms of how easy or hard to drive they are. Most of the vehicles in Driver 3 don't veer far from the Sabre Turbo in Vice City, i.e. they're mostly fast enough vehicles that aren't too hard to handle.
Driving Games
I haven't done much of the driving games in Driver 3 yet but I really like them so far. Because the traffic seems to be the exact same each time you play a particular game, it doesn't get as frustrating as the Sunshine Auto races because you know what the traffic is going to be so you can slow down or dodge or try to improve your driving to avoid known traffic hotspots. And they're obviously much more of a challenge. But is there a place where you can view your best times or time trials or challenges that you've beaten? In Vice City, most of the fun was trying to improve your race times. I don't know what my times are for the races I've completed so far in Driver 3.
Missions
Haven't really done enough of these in Driver 3 to really compare the 2 games. I don't like the control of the main character on foot. One joystick to sidestep and move forward backward and the other to turn on foot? I found it awkward and whenever I viewed myself in replay mode Tanner just looks as awkard as hell on foot side stepping and dancing like an idiot.
Misc
I don't like the idea of choosing differrent play modes - Undercover, Take a Ride and Driving Games. In Vice City it was far better to have everything integrated into one. You had to drive between different missions and it's up you what to do. You can drive to your mission or you can just drive around and take a scenic route or kill people or explorer and find hidden submissions etc. It's much better to just drive around and pick missions or time trials or whatever as you see fit instead of having to pick a mode when you startup your game.
This is only a first impression. I'm still holding out hope that the cops get much more interesting instead of just a bunch of guys in black and whites chasing you. No SWAT teams? No plain clothes guys? No helicopters?
Still, an overall thumbs up so far but still no Vice City. Just a different game in the same genre with some far superior graphics but still lacking in overall gameplay.
KM.
