Driver: You Are the Wheelman
Encyclopedia
Driver is a 1999 action
driving
video game developed by Reflections Interactive (now known as Ubisoft Reflections), who had earlier hits with Destruction Derby
on the early years of the PlayStation. It is the first game in the Driver series
.
customer. The game is played in four cities—(Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles
, and New York City
)—which, like many games, remain only partially faithful to the original city layouts but notably featured them as explorable open world
environments.
The game was designed to mimic 1960s
and 1970s
car chase
films. The title and the basic theme seem to be heavily inspired by the 1978 film The Driver
by director Walter Hill. Most notably, the Training level at the beginning of the game is a copy of a scene in the movie in which the Driver proves his skills to some gangsters in a parking garage. The music, overall character design in the cut scenes, and the cars themselves (complete with flying hubcaps), are inspired from films such as Bullitt
and even television series such as Starsky and Hutch
. The game also features a Director's Mode, where the run could be replayed with cameras chosen by the player, and a Quick Replay, where the cameras were automatically selected.
In addition to the Undercover mode, the player also had an option to drive around in the cities (once they were unlocked) and dirt tracks. There were several other modes, like pursuit, escape, checkpoint, and carnage (inflicting as much damage as possible). After the game was finished (or secret passwords inserted in the records screens), several cheats were available. Among them are: skipping the garage mission, give (among others) the car super speed, immunity to police cars, invincibility, or a short ride on Newcastle
, Reflections' home town. However some editions of the game do not show this.
Initially, it was only released for PlayStation; Windows
and Mac ports were released less than a year later including an Xbox version. A special Game Boy Color
version was released, with top-down view, and only three cities (San Francisco was removed), and fewer missions. There is also an iPhone/iPod Touch version available.
, walks through a parking garage and gets into a 1967 Ford Mustang. He hotwires the Mustang and starts to drive to the exit of the garage, until he is spotted by the police and initiates a chase in which another car crashes into a parked one. Tanner gets away through the barrier after the police car also hits another car.
Tanner begins with a lowly bank job carried out by a man named Art and his associates, before being called up to either drive a stolen car to a yard for a respray or helping a lowly gangster called Ticco carry out an assassination. If Tanner takes the stolen car mission he works for Art in exchanging a briefcase for a key, but ends up being double-crossed and forced to chase the double-crosser across Miami Bay. If Tanner takes Ticco for a ride then Tanner cleans up after a driver left a stolen car and its occupants in the lurch.
Tanner then talks to a pimp
named Rufus who reveals that he is busting out an associate of his called Jean-Paul from an armoured police car. When Tanner carries this out, he either smashes a group of restaurants for a gangster who has found one of his associates lacking in paying for protection money, or drives an extremely fast car to safety for a gangster who needs the car for a job. After this Tanner is forced to pick up a supply of drugs for an operation and get home with the goods.
Upon Tanner's return, Rufus is shot by his girlfriend Jesse and Tanner chases her as she tries to escape in a monorail
. Tanner turns her over to the police, and under interrogation she reveals that a guy named Castaldi is in San Francisco.
From here Tanner either aids in an exchange (passing a test whereby he has to pass through three destinations in a time limit before the pick-up for the exchange), drives stolen guns to a warehouse or aids in the robbery of a shopping mall. Following this, Tanner meets a legendary rival from their racing days called Slater. Tanner punches him but their rivalry is settled before Tanner either aids a gangster in scaring one of his former associates (who double-crossed him) by taking him on a bumpy taxi ride or takes heavy-duty explosives to an alleyway while evading large collisions in order to stop an explosion. If Tanner has scared the associate then he takes a local gangster called Cosy to a chopper taking him out of town, or if he has taken the explosives across town then Tanner aids a group of gangsters left in the lurch in Chinatown.
Tanner then gets a phone call whereby he learns that Mojo the informant has been kidnapped, and his captors want $10,000. They make Tanner work to save Mojo by forcing him to go to three phone booths in order to pick up instructions about where to go next. At the third phone booth Mojo is saved and the money exchanged. Mojo reveals that Castaldi (the gangster Jean-Paul is really working for) is working with a man called Don Hancock who is running for president. He also reveals Slater's great hatred for Tanner.
Following this Tanner is either setup by Slater and forced to evade cops as he heads home, or aids Castaldi in meeting one of his men called Ross and bringing him to an underground car park for a meeting. The rivalry between Tanner and Slater has become too bitter at this point, and when Tanner suspects Slater of spying on him, Tanner frames Slater by smashing his car in a chase, from which in the aftermath Slater is caught by the police.
Following this Tanner learns of Castaldi's true purpose in Los Angeles: the carrying out of a hit
on a security officer of the FBI
called Bill Maddox outside Grauman's Chinese Theater. Tanner later meets with Leck, a partner from New York and alerts him to the assassination of Maddox. Tanner orders him to make sure Maddox turns up or otherwise his cover may be rumbled. He also warns him that there is an FBI leak giving information to Castaldi about Maddox's whereabouts and other pieces of interest. Tanner picks up the assassins from a parking garage before taking them to the Theatre, where the hit takes place. The cops spring an ambush on Tanner, who then takes the gangsters to a safehouse over at LAX. The gangsters are convinced that Tanner (The newest and therefore least trustworthy of the Castaldi Family) tipped off the cops, but he convinces them that Slater probably let the San Francisco Police know about the hit under interrogation.
Tanner survives, then either takes Lucky to an assassination, helps some associates escape from a Beverly Hills job or tests the effectiveness of a safehouse by driving to it.
(a briefcase for a key to a man in a Stetson hat) before getting double-crossed by the Stetson wearer or taking a very damaged car to a scrapyard for crushing before the cops can pick it up. Following this Tanner either takes control of a cop car to thwart a bank job by Granger's Gang and raise his suspicions about possible rats in the Gang, or gets some gangsters out of trouble after they were pinned down by cops in a building after a bad getaway job. After Leck tells Tanner that McKenzie wants him out, he either brings a cab home for further jobs in the city or destroys Granger's main car.
If you took out Granger's main car, then Tanner will have to wreck a car to retrieve photo negatives. If you took the cab, the bad ending mission occurs, destroying four of Granger's Gang's cars before they reach Castaldi.
If the bad ending is being activated (or the good ending mission is completed) then Tanner meets with his associate from Los Angeles who again warns him that the boss wants him out because he is worried that Tanner's cover will not hold up much longer. Tanner again ignores this advice but tells the associate that he will let him know who the ultimate hit is on. If you got the negatives, then Tanner's lady friend Ali will call for help and Tanner has to bail her out of a situation. If you destroyed Granger's four cars, then Tanner goes through a "Rite of Passage", told over the phone by Castaldi that if he does not beat Slater's time across town (7 minutes) then Tanner is out of the final job.
If Tanner completes this mission (or goes for the good ending) then the final mission starts where Tanner learns that the hit is on the President of the United States of America. Tanner is forced (in the hardest mission of the game) to ignore all of Castaldi's instructions and take the President to safety. With a little luck, Tanner takes the President to his parking garage to eventual safety.
-
or Code Breaker
(Or after completing the game in the PC version), players can unlock the city of Newcastle upon Tyne
for play. However, the drivable area is very small and can be glitchy around the barriers.
gave the game a score of 9.7 and Gamespot
gave it a score of 8.6.
Awards:
Nevertheless, PlayStation version suffers from some glitches, that the developers acknowledge and justify because the game was pushing the boundaries of the hardware.
Action game
Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games, which are widely considered the most important action games, though some...
driving
Racing game
A racing video game is a genre of video games, either in the first-person or third-person perspective, in which the player partakes in a racing competition with any type of land, air, or sea vehicles. They may be based on anything from real-world racing leagues to entirely fantastical settings...
video game developed by Reflections Interactive (now known as Ubisoft Reflections), who had earlier hits with Destruction Derby
Destruction Derby
Destruction Derby is a 1995 video game developed by Reflections and published by Psygnosis, the former of which would later develop the successful Driver series. It was released for PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and MS-DOS...
on the early years of the PlayStation. It is the first game in the Driver series
Driver (series)
Driver is a series of mission-based driving video games developed by Reflections Interactive , and originally published by GT Interactive and later by Atari. The gameplay consists of a mixture of action, driving, and third-person shooting in open world environments...
.
Features
Tanner, an NYPD detective gone undercover due to his unmatched driving skills, gained from his time as a racing driver, must gain the confidence of the syndicate's bosses by performing increasingly difficult missions such as stopping or following another car, driving through windows, delivering a stolen car or scaring a taxiTaxicab
A taxicab, also taxi or cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice...
customer. The game is played in four cities—(Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, and New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
)—which, like many games, remain only partially faithful to the original city layouts but notably featured them as explorable open world
Open world
An open world is a type of video game level design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in choosing how to approach objectives...
environments.
The game was designed to mimic 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
and 1970s
1970s
File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...
car chase
Car chase
A car chase is the vehicular pursuit of a suspect by law enforcement officers. Car chases are often captured on film and broadcast due to the availability of video footage recorded by police cars and police and media helicopters participating in the chase...
films. The title and the basic theme seem to be heavily inspired by the 1978 film The Driver
The Driver
The Driver is a 1978 crime film directed by Walter Hill and starring Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern, and Isabelle Adjani. Based upon similarities in plot elements, it is heavily influenced by Jean-Pierre Melville's film Le Samouraï...
by director Walter Hill. Most notably, the Training level at the beginning of the game is a copy of a scene in the movie in which the Driver proves his skills to some gangsters in a parking garage. The music, overall character design in the cut scenes, and the cars themselves (complete with flying hubcaps), are inspired from films such as Bullitt
Bullitt
Bullitt is a 1968 American police procedural film starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset and Robert Vaughn. It was directed by Peter Yates and distributed by Warner Bros. The story was adapted for the screen by Alan Trustman and Harry Kleiner, based on the 1963 novel Mute Witness by Robert L....
and even television series such as Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch is a 1970s American cop thriller television series that consisted of a 90-minute pilot movie and 92 episodes of 60 minutes each; created by William Blinn, produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions, and broadcast between April 30, 1975 and May 15, 1979 on the ABC...
. The game also features a Director's Mode, where the run could be replayed with cameras chosen by the player, and a Quick Replay, where the cameras were automatically selected.
In addition to the Undercover mode, the player also had an option to drive around in the cities (once they were unlocked) and dirt tracks. There were several other modes, like pursuit, escape, checkpoint, and carnage (inflicting as much damage as possible). After the game was finished (or secret passwords inserted in the records screens), several cheats were available. Among them are: skipping the garage mission, give (among others) the car super speed, immunity to police cars, invincibility, or a short ride on Newcastle
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
, Reflections' home town. However some editions of the game do not show this.
Initially, it was only released for PlayStation; Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
and Mac ports were released less than a year later including an Xbox version. A special Game Boy Color
Game Boy Color
The is Nintendo's successor to the 8-bit Game Boy handheld game console, and was released on October 21, 1998 in Japan, November 19, 1998 in North America, November 23, 1998 in Europe and November 27, 1998 in the United Kingdom. It features a color screen and is slightly thicker and taller than...
version was released, with top-down view, and only three cities (San Francisco was removed), and fewer missions. There is also an iPhone/iPod Touch version available.
Story
In the beginning cutscene, you see a dripping pipe and Tanner comes out of an elevatorElevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...
, walks through a parking garage and gets into a 1967 Ford Mustang. He hotwires the Mustang and starts to drive to the exit of the garage, until he is spotted by the police and initiates a chase in which another car crashes into a parked one. Tanner gets away through the barrier after the police car also hits another car.
Training
Before starting the actual undercover mode, Tanner and Lt. McKenzie are talking about a guy named Rufus. In order to find out more about him, Tanner must give up his status as a cop and go undercover. Tanner has to prove to very lowly gangsters in a parking garage that he can do jobs for them by demonstrating his skills while keeping the car intact. Success means access to the first mission in Miami.Miami
Tanner begins his missions in a Miami motel room.Tanner begins with a lowly bank job carried out by a man named Art and his associates, before being called up to either drive a stolen car to a yard for a respray or helping a lowly gangster called Ticco carry out an assassination. If Tanner takes the stolen car mission he works for Art in exchanging a briefcase for a key, but ends up being double-crossed and forced to chase the double-crosser across Miami Bay. If Tanner takes Ticco for a ride then Tanner cleans up after a driver left a stolen car and its occupants in the lurch.
Tanner then talks to a pimp
Pimp
A pimp is an agent for prostitutes who collects part of their earnings. The pimp may receive this money in return for advertising services, physical protection, or for providing a location where she may engage clients...
named Rufus who reveals that he is busting out an associate of his called Jean-Paul from an armoured police car. When Tanner carries this out, he either smashes a group of restaurants for a gangster who has found one of his associates lacking in paying for protection money, or drives an extremely fast car to safety for a gangster who needs the car for a job. After this Tanner is forced to pick up a supply of drugs for an operation and get home with the goods.
Upon Tanner's return, Rufus is shot by his girlfriend Jesse and Tanner chases her as she tries to escape in a monorail
Monorail
A monorail is a rail-based transportation system based on a single rail, which acts as its sole support and its guideway. The term is also used variously to describe the beam of the system, or the vehicles traveling on such a beam or track...
. Tanner turns her over to the police, and under interrogation she reveals that a guy named Castaldi is in San Francisco.
San Francisco
Tanner begins in San Francisco with a casino job for a bunch of gangsters who have heard he is in town. After this mission he meets an informant known as Mojo, who gives Tanner information about who Jean-Paul is really working for and a man named Rudi for money.From here Tanner either aids in an exchange (passing a test whereby he has to pass through three destinations in a time limit before the pick-up for the exchange), drives stolen guns to a warehouse or aids in the robbery of a shopping mall. Following this, Tanner meets a legendary rival from their racing days called Slater. Tanner punches him but their rivalry is settled before Tanner either aids a gangster in scaring one of his former associates (who double-crossed him) by taking him on a bumpy taxi ride or takes heavy-duty explosives to an alleyway while evading large collisions in order to stop an explosion. If Tanner has scared the associate then he takes a local gangster called Cosy to a chopper taking him out of town, or if he has taken the explosives across town then Tanner aids a group of gangsters left in the lurch in Chinatown.
Tanner then gets a phone call whereby he learns that Mojo the informant has been kidnapped, and his captors want $10,000. They make Tanner work to save Mojo by forcing him to go to three phone booths in order to pick up instructions about where to go next. At the third phone booth Mojo is saved and the money exchanged. Mojo reveals that Castaldi (the gangster Jean-Paul is really working for) is working with a man called Don Hancock who is running for president. He also reveals Slater's great hatred for Tanner.
Following this Tanner is either setup by Slater and forced to evade cops as he heads home, or aids Castaldi in meeting one of his men called Ross and bringing him to an underground car park for a meeting. The rivalry between Tanner and Slater has become too bitter at this point, and when Tanner suspects Slater of spying on him, Tanner frames Slater by smashing his car in a chase, from which in the aftermath Slater is caught by the police.
Los Angeles
LA is straight-forward, and all missions are at night. Tanner begins his job here by either stealing a cop car for Castaldi's associates in order for future jobs or rescues an associate called Lucky from a gangster called Granger. Following this Tanner then either chases a double-crossing associate of Castaldi's called Duval and smashes him off the road or gets Castaldi's girlfriend Maya to a hospital after she has overdosed on drugs.Following this Tanner learns of Castaldi's true purpose in Los Angeles: the carrying out of a hit
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
on a security officer of the FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
called Bill Maddox outside Grauman's Chinese Theater. Tanner later meets with Leck, a partner from New York and alerts him to the assassination of Maddox. Tanner orders him to make sure Maddox turns up or otherwise his cover may be rumbled. He also warns him that there is an FBI leak giving information to Castaldi about Maddox's whereabouts and other pieces of interest. Tanner picks up the assassins from a parking garage before taking them to the Theatre, where the hit takes place. The cops spring an ambush on Tanner, who then takes the gangsters to a safehouse over at LAX. The gangsters are convinced that Tanner (The newest and therefore least trustworthy of the Castaldi Family) tipped off the cops, but he convinces them that Slater probably let the San Francisco Police know about the hit under interrogation.
Tanner survives, then either takes Lucky to an assassination, helps some associates escape from a Beverly Hills job or tests the effectiveness of a safehouse by driving to it.
New York City
When Tanner arrives back in New York he begins by either making a switch at Grand Central TerminalGrand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal —often incorrectly called Grand Central Station, or shortened to simply Grand Central—is a terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States...
(a briefcase for a key to a man in a Stetson hat) before getting double-crossed by the Stetson wearer or taking a very damaged car to a scrapyard for crushing before the cops can pick it up. Following this Tanner either takes control of a cop car to thwart a bank job by Granger's Gang and raise his suspicions about possible rats in the Gang, or gets some gangsters out of trouble after they were pinned down by cops in a building after a bad getaway job. After Leck tells Tanner that McKenzie wants him out, he either brings a cab home for further jobs in the city or destroys Granger's main car.
If you took out Granger's main car, then Tanner will have to wreck a car to retrieve photo negatives. If you took the cab, the bad ending mission occurs, destroying four of Granger's Gang's cars before they reach Castaldi.
If the bad ending is being activated (or the good ending mission is completed) then Tanner meets with his associate from Los Angeles who again warns him that the boss wants him out because he is worried that Tanner's cover will not hold up much longer. Tanner again ignores this advice but tells the associate that he will let him know who the ultimate hit is on. If you got the negatives, then Tanner's lady friend Ali will call for help and Tanner has to bail her out of a situation. If you destroyed Granger's four cars, then Tanner goes through a "Rite of Passage", told over the phone by Castaldi that if he does not beat Slater's time across town (7 minutes) then Tanner is out of the final job.
If Tanner completes this mission (or goes for the good ending) then the final mission starts where Tanner learns that the hit is on the President of the United States of America. Tanner is forced (in the hardest mission of the game) to ignore all of Castaldi's instructions and take the President to safety. With a little luck, Tanner takes the President to his parking garage to eventual safety.
-
Newcastle
In a nod to the city where Reflections Interactive is based, and using a GamesharkGameShark
GameShark is the brand name of a line of video game cheat cartridges and other products for a variety of console video game systems and Windows based computers. Currently, the brand name is owned by Mad Catz, who actively markets GameShark products for the PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and Sega game...
or Code Breaker
Code Breaker
Code Breaker is a cheat device developed by Pelican Accessories, currently available for PlayStation 2 and Nintendo DS. Along with competing product Action Replay, it is one of the few currently supported video game cheat devices.-History:...
(Or after completing the game in the PC version), players can unlock the city of Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
for play. However, the drivable area is very small and can be glitchy around the barriers.
iPhone/iPod Touch
There is an app on iTunes of this game. It is $2.99 as of date. It was free for a limited time.Reception and awards
The first Driver game was met with very positive feedback and critical acclaim. IGNIGN
IGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
gave the game a score of 9.7 and Gamespot
GameSpot
GameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
gave it a score of 8.6.
Awards:
- E3 1999 Game Critics AwardsGame Critics AwardsThe Game Critics Awards are a set of annual awards held after the E3 video game conference since 1998. The awards are given to products displayed at E3 with the title Best of E3 of their category. The nominees and winners of the awards are chosen by individual judges representing 35 major North...
: Best Racing Game - Ranked #12 on IGNIGNIGN is an entertainment website that focuses on video games, films, music and other media. IGN's main website comprises several specialty sites or "channels", each occupying a subdomain and covering a specific area of entertainment...
's list of the "Top 25 Games of All Time" for the first PlayStation console.
Nevertheless, PlayStation version suffers from some glitches, that the developers acknowledge and justify because the game was pushing the boundaries of the hardware.