Driv3r - Atari's Savior, Or Lara Croft-Style Travesty?

Thanks to Eurogamer for its hands-on preview of a near-complete build of Atari's PlayStation 2 title Driv3r, as the article notes: "Never before has an entire company's fate rested so heavily on the release of one product [financials reveal $20 million for 'production costs'... and 'marketing costs... double that amount'], but Reflection's long-overdue sequel is that kind of game, and Atari is doubtlessly slightly peeved that... it has had to watch from the sidelines while Rockstar, Sony and even Activision have cleaned up in mission-based driving stakes." Although the previewer rhapsodizes: "Anyone who loves pure driving will have a fantastic time in Driv3r", the out-of-car elements are another story: "The third-person control system feels sluggish [and] the combat/shooting is currently nowhere near the standard it needs to be", and the preview ends with the warning (though it's possible the gameplay "may well come together at the last minute"): "Releasing [the game] in an unpolished state would be a crime of Angel Of Darkness proportions."

Atari cannot be saved

[Txiasaeia]

Atari has apparently decided to cut back [ft.com] on video game titles by 20% and the number of PC games to only 20%. Driv3r isn't going to help this company as they go down, down, and further down, Interplay style [lycos.com]. Not that I'm bitter.

Re:Atari cannot be saved

[superpulpsicle]

I am mighty confused. Are they claiming that UT2004, dragonball Z, backyard baseball and a host of other well known titles aren't profitable???

Why bank on Driv3r? It's like GTA with only the driving action.

Re:Atari cannot be saved

[AltaMannen]

Because the titles you list are popular among a smaller marketshare (guessing maybe up to 1M units for each title) than driver would be (probably aiming at the same people as GTA or around 5M units).

Re:Atari cannot be saved

[sammaffei]

'Atari' died once before in 1996...

...it just won't stay dead!!!

Re:Atari cannot be saved

[cgenman]

'Once' before? That name has dragged down several companies. There is the original flameout. There was poor little JTS. And what happened to Williams? How is Hasbro's stock doing? Why anyone would still touch that company's name is far beyond me. It's like being excited about picking up a great deal on the Necronomicon that you overlook the fact that all of the previous owners are dead.

Re:Atari cannot be saved

[ciupman]

You haven't seen blade runner have you? It's still there .. alive and kicking ..

These games...

[silentbobdp]

The Driver series has never been well-polished...both Driver and Driver 2 suffered from ugly graphics (even at the time), one hell of a difficulty curve and the worst pop-up ever seen.

They were somewhat enjoyable, and the huge, real cities were fun, but other than that I don't expect too much out of the third game either.

Them's fightin words!

[Syncdata]

I won't defend it's sequel, but Driver 1 was one of the most well polished games I have ever had the joy of playing. Difficulty curve? High, to be sure. The number of times I had to redo the *ahem* certification exam in the parking garage cannot be counted. But you're complaining about pop-up? This was a PS1 game. Pop up was a fact of life. Play Grand tourismo 1 again, and you'll remember. Driver 1 had surface reflections, huge maps, tight handles, excellent sound, and really nothing to complain abo

Re:Them's fightin words!

[silentbobdp]

That's fine for you to defend it, but you're still wrong.

The pop-up was horrendous even at the time. Especially considering the end quality of the graphics - which weren't that great at all. I mean, they tried, they threw everything they had at the poor PS1, but they failed miserably at making something that LOOKED good.

Now, does it FEEL right? Absolutely.

Still, GT1 looks far better than Driver did, and yet has far less pop-up. Also, pop-up is more important in Driver, as you're never interacting with yo

Jumping in a little late.

[hal2814]

Infogrames is betting the farm on a type of game that has probably already peaked in popularity. They are being reactive here instead of proactive. They need to break new ground instead of trying to go with the flow. They also need to not put all of their eggs in one basket. I see this as an unwise move that might lead to Infogrames demise. Even if this game is popular, I don't see it making the kind of money they need to make in order to qualify it as a success.

Re:Jumping in a little late.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Infogrames is betting the farm on a type of game that has probably already peaked in popularity. They are being reactive here instead of proactive. They need to break new ground instead of trying to go with the flow. They also need to not put all of their eggs in one basket."

I think that there's one more cliche that you missed. Can anyone else come up with it?

Re:Jumping in a little late.

[Toddarooski]

Maybe the Driv3r team needs to start working smarter, not harder.

Out-maneuvered by Rockstar?

[Tuvai]

Back in its heyday on the PSone I was a massive fan of both Driver and its sequal, the games seemed fresh, innovative, providing a real challenge with it's misson based diving (and the occasional time on-foot in the sequal) However this was during the murky distant times where the GTA series was confined to a mere 2-dimentions.
The gameplay sounds hauntingly similar; From the wide selection of vehicles to commandeer, the on foot aspect thrown in, the mission based gameplay (albeit with more arcade leanings), and even the HUD itself. All of these draw faint echos of Rockstars creation and its rapidly expanding list of somewhat accomplished clones.
Conisdering the protracted and near aborted development alongside this, I fear that not even the minor wave of nostalgia for the prequals could save this game from being another albatross around the already weighty neck of Atari.

only 20 Million this time?

[Enrico Pulatzo]

At least it wasn't E.T. [snopes.com]

Re:only 20 Million this time?

[billcopc]

Hey!

E.T. was kind cool in a lo-fi way, until you hit that glitch where as soon as your neck sticks out of a pit, your legs pull you back down, and then you repeat this until you die and that faggot comes around to revive you. And then you die again.

Man that game sucked!

The irony is not lost here...

[OneFix at Work]

Reflections was at one time a part of the old Psygnosis...DMA Design (now Rockstar) was also part of Psygnosis...

When Reflections and DMA Design were both with Psygnosis, Psygnosis was heavy into the Amiga.

Core Design (later developed Tomb Raider at Eidos) was also once a big Amiga developer...

Wonder if Team 17 will rise again...they seem to be real big with the "Worms" thing...have been since the first one...A Halo-ish version of Alien Breed might be kewl... :)

Re:The irony is not lost here...

[srashdotu]

I suspect that eurogamer might be under pressure to "big up" its hands-on review. I've heard from a couple journos at some respected magazines that prior to even getting a look at the game they have to agree to write Good Things(tm) about it. They've even written so much on this forum [spong.com].

Were Reflection really part of "Pig noses"? I though that it and DMA were both simple developers that had titles published by the mighty Owl/Pig.

Reflection were of course formerly responsible for the graphically rich but

Re:The irony is not lost here...

[OneFix at Work]

I suspect that eurogamer might be under pressure to "big up" its hands-on review. I've heard from a couple journos at some respected magazines that prior to even getting a look at the game they have to agree to write Good Things(tm) about it. They've even written so much on this forum.

As is generally the case with "exclusives"...

Were Reflection really part of "Pig noses"? I though that it and DMA were both simple developers that had titles published by the mighty Owl/Pig.

Yes, Reflections and DMA were

The game has had developmental troubles

[M3wThr33]

I was bitching in the forums for a long while trying to figure out why they dropped the GameCube version. If they said profits, demographic or anything like that, I would have accepted it. You know what they said instead?
They have a couple ex-Rare employees working there, and when asked about the GameCube, they said that the RAM access times were too low to load city data as you go around the corner. So if the game did come out, the cars would have to go at lower speeds to have more time to load the data.

I'm sorry, but the ram on the GameCube is not an issue. Loading has been a primary concern from the 1st step. I have no clue who this ex-Rare guy is, but it's obvious he has no business working on the GameCube if he can't get the streaming data to work properly.

May I remind you they are still making the PS2 version.

Re:The game has had developmental troubles

[CheeseMonkey]

It *might* have had more to do with the fact that the GC has less RAM (24M) and less to do with the slower RAM (which I honestly don't know whether it does or doesn't)

But I could see that if they could store less level data at a time, they would need to load more often (and hence have slower cars)... but of course the general solution for that sort of thing is just to lower texture res. or something for GC, not to ditch the whole project!

My 2c/random guessing.

Re:The game has had developmental troubles

[billcopc]

If their code or data structures are too flawed to stream in as fast as the game needs, then they simply need to rethink their code/data. If the Gamecube is 20% slower (big vulgarisation here), then just reduce the map data by 20% and go on with life. Heck, if people can port games to the 32mb PS2 and the 64mb Xbox with minor visual or audio differences, but still fully playable... well, Gamecube can't be that far away in terms of development hurdles.

Here's the problem

[nobodyman]

Technically, the Gamecube has 48MB of RAM, but the problem is that 24MB of the ram consists of relatively fast 1T-SRAM with a bandwidth of 2.6GB/sec and another 16MB of standard DRAM that has a bandwidth of only 81MB/sec. Here's a some good info on it [pcvsconsole.com]

In contrast, the PS2 has 32MB of ram that runs at 3.2GB/sec (more linkage [ualberta.ca]).

So, yeah, if your trying to feed geometry to the GPU the slower ram may not cut it. What some developers do (for example, lucasarts when they made jedi starfighter) is use the slower ram as a ramdisk "swap drive", or just use it to hold sound. In essence, though, you've got 8 megs less than a ps2.

My guess is this: If theywanted to make Driv3r for the Gamecube you could definitely do it (and make it look damn good), but it wouldn't be as easy as doing a simple port from the PS2 version. While profits may not have been the stated reason, perhaps revenue from the gamecube version were not worth the added cost/headache of porting.

Dunno... It's all speculation on my part. But the slow RAM issue isn't bullshit, for what it's worth.

Re:Here's the problem

[scot4875]

Well, also keep in mind that the Gamecube has a relatively large and very fast video memory buffer, along with S3 texture compression, giving it roughly a 12:1 compression ratio. That frees up a ton of memory space and bandwidth for extra geometry. Of course, if they go the same route as many developers and "optimze for PS2, port to 'Cube," those capabilities will probably be ignored anyway.

Also, the 1T-SRAM doesn't have the burst bandwidth that the PS2's memory does, but it does have nearly non-existant

Hope it's better than Driver 2

[MBraynard]

I had to write a review of Driver 2. Problem was I found it so hard I couldn't get off of the training level (this was the PC version). And I didn't find the PS version any easier.

Limited site

[Winterblink]

All that cash spent on marketing and they couldn't produce a website for people who don't use Flash? :/