Why Bother? Driver: Parallel Lines (Wii) Review
Posted on
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
This review will likely take more time to write than it took me to play Driver: Parallel Lines for the Wii. The lack of time spent on both playing and writing isn't to say the game is short, because I've no idea how short the game is. What the game is can be shortened into an acronym: YASP, which stands for Yet Another Shitty Port. The review is short because I couldn't stand to play this game for more than twenty minutes and neither should anyone else.
Not having played any of the previous Driver games, I can't comment on how it compares to the rest of the series. It bears a startling similarity to the Grand Theft Auto series of games, complete with Pulp Fiction-esque cinematics. The story follows a young driver in 1970's New York, just a wacky guy who takes odd jobs being the getaway driver for all manner of criminal enterprises. The game part of this story involves stealing cars, driving the cars around to various waypoints and evading the police to complete whatever mission is presented to the player.
All of that might be fun, if it weren't for the controls. The game is a wasteful mess, a good concept wrapped around sloppy, sluggish controls. Driving is an exercise in frustration, using the Nunchuk's analog stick to terrible effect. The stick is unresponsive and hard to use, as if the developers didn't want to bother tweaking the software to respond to this particular set of hardware. In the short time I played, I found no use of the Wii's motion controls at all. Given how badly the analog stick was utilized, I should probably be thankful I wasn't forced to use bad waggle just to justify the game's existence on the Wii.
In short, the game is a terrible, terrible port that is a complete waste of a DVD. No one should buy, rent or play this game. It is a YASP of the lowest kind, yet another shitty port that disrespects the system and its fans.
Not having played any of the previous Driver games, I can't comment on how it compares to the rest of the series. It bears a startling similarity to the Grand Theft Auto series of games, complete with Pulp Fiction-esque cinematics. The story follows a young driver in 1970's New York, just a wacky guy who takes odd jobs being the getaway driver for all manner of criminal enterprises. The game part of this story involves stealing cars, driving the cars around to various waypoints and evading the police to complete whatever mission is presented to the player.
All of that might be fun, if it weren't for the controls. The game is a wasteful mess, a good concept wrapped around sloppy, sluggish controls. Driving is an exercise in frustration, using the Nunchuk's analog stick to terrible effect. The stick is unresponsive and hard to use, as if the developers didn't want to bother tweaking the software to respond to this particular set of hardware. In the short time I played, I found no use of the Wii's motion controls at all. Given how badly the analog stick was utilized, I should probably be thankful I wasn't forced to use bad waggle just to justify the game's existence on the Wii.
In short, the game is a terrible, terrible port that is a complete waste of a DVD. No one should buy, rent or play this game. It is a YASP of the lowest kind, yet another shitty port that disrespects the system and its fans.
Labels: Nintendo, Video Games, Wii
posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 8:15 PM
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