Driver 2... Too Much for PS1. Not Enough for PS2 || LibraScope Review

[@LibraScope]

CORRECTIONS: Driver 1 and 2 both do indeed have very rudimentary, stepped analog steering controls. Unlike some PS1 games, they have to be opted into by enabling them, rather than being enabled by default. There seem to be about 5 or so steps to them, meaning functionally it's not too far off from just being digital mapped to analog. And the in-game deadzones are enormous. But there is indeed very basic analog steering in both games. Meanwhile, if you have analog turned off or are using the d-pad, I can confirm that Driver 2 absolutely has a slightly more gradual acceleration to full lock from neutral steering. Thanks to @dmer-zy3rb for the help in clarifying this. Open Driver and ReDriver 2 are not the same projects. Both are separate open source porting attempts based on decompilation efforts. Credit to @VortexStory for clearing that up.

[@NoName-ik2du]

Moderately fun tangential fact: In Driver 3, using the d-pad instead of the joystick results in significantly slower steering response. Steering position using the d-pad very gradually goes from zero to full lock. The joystick on the other hand has a nearly instant response to whatever position of steering you input.

[@LibraScope]

@@NoName-ik2du Ahh, interesting! I haven't gone back to a lot of those older driving/racing games to specifically test d-pad steering, but I'd imagine a lot of studios handled it very differently.

[@NoName-ik2du]

@@LibraScope Honestly, I didn't notice it until years after I'd finished the game. I'm one of the few people who still uses d-pads for driving games (if the game allows it). When I went back to play Driver 3 again, I found the steering really sluggish, so I fiddled with it for a minute and noticed the differences between the d-pad and joystick behavior. Up until that point, I'd never even considered that a game developer would put any thought into d-pad steering response speed at all. I just always assumed games instantly went from 0 to 1 when using the d-pad.

[@LibraScope]

@@NoName-ik2du I was the same way for a long time, until I started to learn about how much work has gone into making shooters feel good on analog sticks for a long time. Then I started learning about how they've put the same type of work into movement both on stick and d-pad. There can be so many subtleties involved.

[@BeaugosseRiche]

For all the kids watching this video: the game didn't look as low res and mushy back in the day on real hardware with a CRT.

[@LibraScope]

It was still pretty chunky, considering it's 240P. But yeah, technically a CRT television is going to blend it all decently well. Especially on consoles using Composite or Coaxial or something. It'll never gain detail though. At best it would just blend the chunky pixels into a blurry but legible picture.

[@milenschneewei6754]

On my 14 inch samung it looked like real life at the time 😅

[@koraku8519]

I found a Zenith System 3 from 1984 at a local shop, my quest for a CRT is done

[@MajorZeroCELL]

I remember this game well, and it did look like what we have in this video. CRT TV tends to blur the sharp edges, but the game didn't look that good compared to Driver.

[@BeaugosseRiche]

@@MajorZeroCELL It certainly didn't look good, it was gross.

[@mythicdale8757]

I always remember being blown away that Driver 2 would have curved fucking roads. Like the studio director in a magazine was talking about this as if it was a revelation. And the thing that is bonkers is that it was at the time...

[@LibraScope]

Hahaha, that's very true!

[@TheBeldings-j5c]

​@LibraScope imagine being a kid and you boot up #2. And you can fucking get out of your car and buy a ticket st the baseball game. Wtf

[@joshsmith2021]

@@LibraScopeI actually was playing driver one pc and me and my older brother were taking turns running from the cops on take a ride and I said to him I bet you in driver 2 you’ll be able to get out of the car. A whole year before driver 2 came out and 2 years before gta3 came out and changed everything!!! A little 6 year old boy predicted the future of gaming!!! Haha nice video tho subscribed!!!

[@LibraScope]

@@joshsmith2021 Hahaha, that's cool :D Thanks for the sub!

[@sonoradrift]

The secret car in the baseball stadium(Chicago's Wrigley Field) is the yellow muscle car which was pictured in pre-release gameplay screenshots of Driver 1, and also on the back of the PSM Driver 1 Demo Disc(paper sleeve), but never actually appeared in Driver 1. As a kid, finally being able to drive this car in Driver 2 was blissful:) The secret Mini Cooper from the bunker in Havana is also really cool. Thanks for making this Driver 2 video. Really takes me back to how grueling this game was, and how rewarding it was to finally complete it on PS1. It was the only game me and my Dad played together before he passed away(raced around in multiplayer on the curvy cliff areas in Havana) so, extra nostalgia factor for sure.

[@LibraScope]

Sounds pretty similar to some of my experiences. I absolutely understand why this game is special for you! Also, nice Impreza as your channel avatar :D

[@BluWarta92]

I love the quick route to that mini... Just drive over the elevator hole and jump out your car at exact moment lands you right next to the mini cooper.

[@muhammadaliffbinmuhammadla7846]

Driver 3... a tragedy, and a controversy. It marking the beginning of GTA domination in the open world genre, as their challengers were either stagnated and forgotten (True Crime/Sleeping Dogs) or changed genre altogether (Urban Chaos). Honestly I enjoyed Driver 2. One of the few games to feature open world location of Brazil and even Cuba.

[@LibraScope]

Yeah, it was really fun to see less common locations realized in a game! And I definitely plan on looking at Driver 3 one day!

[@camrunner6633]

Had they not made stuntman and focused fully on driver 3 it would have been a different story

[@killak2death]

Urban Chaos was meant to be open world?

[@Armrongeddon]

I remember Driver 3 fondly, it looked nice, had more variety and a cool cinematic camera. And no walking around nonsense. The fourth one is where it really went wrong.

[@bagelbytes69420]

@@LibraScope Best thing about Driv3r is the soundtrack. Played Ripe For The Devil by Okuniev on repeat for a LONG time

[@RobertKliethermes]

Oh man, watching that footage of Driver 1 is bringing back so many memories. What a fun game. Also, that train mission where you rescue someone in the trunk of the car just looked plain fun. Hate to be "that guy", but they don't make them like they used to.

[@LibraScope]

In a way, you're not wrong. I think there's something to be said for the simplicity and focus of games that had such severe 3D/media limitations. It's similar to early game music often being more memorable, because the limited soundscape they had meant it needed to emphasize catchy melodies that you can hum to. Limitation like that, breeds innovation and creativity a lot of the time. That, on top of the lower stakes of a smaller industry back then, where a few million dollars was riding on a game's success, rather than hundreds of millions. I don't think it's bad that games are different now. But it certainly comes with a different set of sacrifices, limitations, and problems that can easily make earlier days seem brighter and more engaging. I think indies are doing a great job of making up for that. Unfortunately, to my knowledge nobody has tried to tackle what Driver did in the indie scene yet.

[@majine.2606]

Yeah, the indie scene is caught in this weird space where emulating the sorts of projects from the fifth generation of consoles and beyond is sort of beyond most teams. They're too resource-intensive in a lot of ways for small teams to go about. Even something like "Super Mario 64", despite seeming like such a simple game by modern standards, had so many little things put into it that added up that attempting to replicate that would take more time and budget than most indie developers can afford. Granted, I am hopeful that as tools continue to improve, the gap will become increasingly shorter, but we are unfortunately a decent ways off from it closing completely.@@LibraScope

[@LibraScope]

@@majine.2606 I agree to some extent. But I do think sticking with the low poly aesthetic from the era is a huge help. Because workflows and tech have advanced so far that creating such assets and building a game around them is far easier than it was back then. And it also avoids all of the struggles of making a more modern presentation for an oldschool style game. For example, you don't need to worry near as much about LoD because the power of computers today can sometimes just load an entire low poly stage M64 size at once. But you also don't have to worry about modern facial or body animations during cutscene or whatever either, because your low poly models won't allow it. Still difficult, absolutely. And I don't think there are as many indie focused resources dedicated to cheap 3D work as there are for indie 2D games. But if their work is period accurate in certain strategic ways, modern tech alleviates a lot of the most brutal aspects of old school 3D development. Even just like testing through modern compilation saves probably hours a day of work.

[@majine.2606]

I would certainly love more low-poly games. I think that aesthetically, the fifth generation of my consoles may be my favorite because there was such a plethora of that stuff. I like to think that within the next handful of years, more of these kinds of games will come about...there are some pieces of software like Blockbench specifically dedicated to low-poly 3D modeling. But it's probably going to take a bit of time yet.@@LibraScope

[@dennyfrontier]

Trust me youre not that guy pal. Right where you breathe

[@Dave_Albright]

PC version of Driver 2 was planed but Reflection worked with a new engine for the new PS2 era (Stuntman, Driv3r and Driver Parallel Lines)... so no time for a PC Version.

[@LibraScope]

Yeah that makes sense. If I recall correctly, Stuntman was so early that it was still on a blue disc on PS2 even. I'd have to check my copy.

[@rickastley2308]

Sounds silly but the ability to sit in a chair was so shockingly fresh and cool.

[@LibraScope]

Hahaha, right?! :D

[@camrunner6633]

That level of interaction wasnt expected in games fo that era, chairs and such were normally rotating sprites

[@dirty-moto]

1:27: You have to switch the controller into analog mode (the Playstation DualShock has a button for this between the sticks; on a Retro Fighters Defender I push the Home button) and the steering is actually analog. Currently playing this on PS2, definitely can be a challenging game and no wonder I sucked as a kid with it.

[@LibraScope]

I'm fairly certain I had it set to analog mode :) But that doesn't necessarily mean that their implementation of analog control was particularly great. You can feel similar things in a lot of early FPS games and third person analog cameras in PS2 era titles. Sometimes despite being analog, they're really stiff or have outdated sensitivity curves that feel more like digital inputs with a ramp than true analog. It could be either of course in this case! It's just not the MOST elegant analog feel either way, even if it's better than the original game for sure :)

[@angryretrogamer7313]

I'm playing this on a PS2 with a retro fighter defender too. I was delighted to see your comment because I was wondering if I could get analog steering using the defender. Thanks for the info👍

[@tjnucnuc]

Ahh the soundscape totally brings me back. The horns, the damage sound and the tire squeal. Does anyone remember The Getaway? It was like the British Driver. Also seemingly fairly realistic driving physics.

[@LibraScope]

@@tjnucnuc I've never played the original Getaway, but I have the sequel, Black Monday. Pretty interesting game.

[@sea4our]

The Getaway 1 is a slept on masterpiece. the graphics for that game still blow my mind to this day, particularly the facial models.

[@sea4our]

@@LibraScope the sequel is trash. play the first one.

[@tjnucnuc]

@@sea4our exactly

[@TRRDroid]

I wish Driver 2 had a PC port like Driver 1

[@LibraScope]

Agreed.

[@Don_Ramiro]

A fan named Soapy, made a PC port of Driver 2. It has a increased draw distance, fixes some bugs of the original game and, most importantly, the game runs now at a stable 30 fps (so no more framedrops like in Ps1). The project is called ReDriver2, I recommend you to check it out.

[@muhammadbinhanapi2236]

Search redriver 2

[@muhammadbinhanapi2236]

Bro search redriver 2

[@CuriousPerson2206]

It does now

[@vegetarey]

Driver is one of my fav sagas of all time. I did finish Driver 1,2, and 3 back in the day, (the PS1 were pirate copies and driv3r was a legit copy for PS2), i really want to own the games again, or have the chance to buy them on gog/steam or some modern storefront. In the meantime, i still play Driver 1/2 on RetroArch, the RE-Driver 2 port and Driv3r with the the definitive edition mod for PC

[@cs8712]

Can you believe the stones on Vasquez? He sends me a car packing C4. We're gonna gift wrap it back.

[@fuselpeter5393]

The mission where you chase the red car around that crater was the mission that broke me. xD

[@LibraScope]

Absolutely understandable. There were points where I thought it was gonna do the same to me for sure. I got very lucky here.

[@BrandonP8176]

I'm surprised you didn't mention the Chase The Train mission in Chicago because this mission really gave me a really hard time back in the day. I would often hit the sand mounds and it would cause me to crash into the poles and fail the mission right from the start lol. Even when I did manage to get through the sand mounds it was still a difficult task to not crash into things as I'm pursuing the train. I played this game since 2006 and even today that mission still gives me a tough time. I actually found Chase The Intruder to be easier than Chase The Train although I did struggle with it the first few attempts but then it became pretty easy for me.

[@LibraScope]

Interesting! I usually only have a problem with Chase the Train the first time after I pick the game up again. Since you can see the tracks on the map, you know the only places the train can go. And there are only a couple of places that the game tries to fool you into making a wrong turn. As such, I never have trouble keeping. As for the mounds, I'd chalk my ease with dealing with them up to me playing lots of sim racers and rally games and such. So I can get a good gauge on the right speed, angle, etc. to properly handle the weight transfer. I do remember making one major mistake on one of the mounds, when playing it for this review. But I don't remember if I included the clip in the video itself.

[@asad5067]

the worst mission was chasing this red car in this canyon towards the end of the game and you had to ram it i think.

[@LibraScope]

@@asad5067 That would likely be the third to last mission, which I think is called Chase the Gunman. And yeah it's absolutely brutal.

[@angryretrogamer7313]

That mission gave me trouble too. One tiny mistake and it's over. I found myself screaming out "it's a fkn train!!!" to the tv. How can I loose it when it's on a track😂. I still had fun all 25 tries until I finally beat it.

[@lazoali9555]

Great video! You mentioning Driver 2 being too much for PS1 but potentially underwhelming for PS2 speaks volumes on how big of a leap it was to go from 5th to 6th gen. Lots of stuff that simply wouldn’t have been possible on PS1.

[@LibraScope]

Very true, and a super succinct way of putting it!

[@Dexter01992]

Oh God, "Stake out" gives me PTSD even 20 years after I played it. One time I was replaying it I was a spit of health from dying and was about to touch the end of the mission after I had to fight the police cars on the spot to allow myself to finish the mission. Except a traffic car, which were not programmed to stop at your presence, decided to bump me mere inches from stopping completely at the waypoint, making me fail the mission and having to start over from the nth time. By far the most cancerous mission of the game along with the bomb truck.

[@LibraScope]

Awe, that sucks, hahaha. I had that sort of thing happen a few times here, and back when I looked at Driver 1 years and years ago now. It's always so frustrating.

[@WickedParanoid]

Wait till you get to that gunman mission. This one is at least genuinely hard, gunman one is of the BS hard variety, which, at least in my book, is much worse.

[@ClassicSonicSatAm]

It should of came to the Dreamcast or had a PC port like the 1st game did, thankfully ReDriver 2 is a thing now, which is the best way to play it now.

[@LibraScope]

Yeah, those would've been good options.

[@josephwj7199]

Small correction, but you can technically lose the cops in Survival mode. It's hilarious! And even kind of creepy in one case. I managed to do it on 3-4 different occasions. I'll go in order of interesting circumstances: One of them was just sheer luck, a fluke. In Havana, a cop car slammed into me and chucked me down a road, but the group of cop cars were all dogpiled together in a block corner. It seems I gained enough distance while they were kind of jammed up that I lost them. That lasted all of maybe 2 seconds because another 3 immediately spawned on the map nearby my position and I quickly ended up in their alert range. In general, the cops' (or other chasers) AI has a very debilitating issue with driving through tunnels and other indoor areas. More than 90% of the time, they can't enter these spaces, and when they do, they glitch out quite a lot. So in survival mode, try to exploit that. In Chicago, go into the building's indoor parking complex that's nearby the starting point. In Havana, somehow manage to make your way to the underwater tunnel connecting to the little island. Finally, the creepy one. Turn on invincibility and play survival in Rio. Lure the cops into the nearby beach water. Next, try to get them behind you, kind of arranged side by side. I find this visual in general just hysterical, btw (3 cop cars slowly but aggressively following you around). Anyway, lead them to the edge of the map with the void and kind of wobble near the edge and they should all eventually fall over the edge into the void. When you drive away, but keeping along the edge of the water, you'll lose them. And now, the most interesting, and also creepy part. Sit back and watch on your side map just how the cop AI is programmed for this survival mode. 2-3 cop cars at a time spawning on the map; as soon as one disappears another immediately spawns in. Just rapidly blinking white spots on the map. So intimidating, it almost feels like they're coming after not Tanner, but you the player holding the controller.

[@LibraScope]

Ahh, fair enough! I'm assuming losing them is still unintended, since they will so quickly spawn back in, in such numbers. But that's certainly interesting. And also impressive that you seem to be good enough at Survival to have found all of this out :D

[@josephwj7199]

@@LibraScope Haha, I played this game a TON back in the day. Even as late as 2014, I went back to it and had a several-hours long nostalgia blast. Then later in 2017, I fired up the PS2 and played through Driver 1-3. One thing this game (and its sequel) is very well known for is all the bugs and glitches. There are literally hundreds of weird things to discover. Probably even more not yet discovered to this day. Here's one I think has gotten lost in the shuffle over the years. You can toggle rain on/off in Havana in the weirdest way. I forgot the exact details. But park any car at a certain angle and distance from the entrance arch to the church at the starting point in Take A Ride; on foot, stand next to the car; press one of the controller buttons (I forget which) to toggle the rain. Out of the countless sus cheats/secrets submitted to sites back in the day, this is the only one that turned out to be true.

[@LibraScope]

@@josephwj7199 Oh, that's an interesting one I've never heard :D

[@Armrongeddon]

In the first one I'd hit the hills in San Francisco and with some luck they'd all end up on their roofs and if you didn't drive too far they wouldn't respawn.

[@josephwj7199]

@@Armrongeddon Yeah, you can cheese the survival time with tricks like that. Same in the tunnels in D2. I'm curious if it's possible to lose the cops in that scenario in D1.

[@8bitnitwit]

I spent so much time playing the freeroam night mode in the dark as a teenager, while listening to Eminem. It all felt so atmospheric at the time. I never got to see the Las Vegas level, or whatever else was on disc 2. 😆

[@TheDeadmanTT]

I only played Driver 3. Sorry Driv3r 3, but I always enjoy your coverage of the earlier titles.

[@LibraScope]

I'm hoping to one day take a look at the other Driver games. I have Parallel Lines and San Francisco. I also believe I have the PC version of Drive- ...Driv3r, lol. But how well that one will work with a controller is a big question mark.

[@mattsmedley.onehandedgamin9029]

I put countless hours into "just drive" over various cities. Yes I've still got a PS1 & I bet the save file is still on one of the memory cards.

[@LibraScope]

:D I probably would too, except I kept having memory card mishaps with my PS1, so eventually I transferred all my files to my PS3 for safe keeping.

[@Swiftiemay8913]

I think I might just go back & play it again after this video!

[@LibraScope]

Nice! If you do, I hope you have a great time!

[@NotADoctor558]

Matching up the "damage" meter for the transition at 8:03 was smooth.

[@LibraScope]

Hahaha I never noti- err... I mean, yeah. That was totally intentional... 😎👀😎

[@majine.2606]

As someone who never played any of the Driver games, so I can't say that I know how frustrating "Driver 2" can play. But on the topic of whether or not it would have been better off being released for the PS2, I think it's probably always best for a project if it's perceived as being too advanced for a system that it's released on as opposed to being underwhelming. So, they probably made the right call for the game's reputation by releasing it on the PSX, even if it required sacrificing technical stability. Also, I would imagine that much of the game's architecture was cribbed from the original "Driver". While some of that code could have been repurposed for a PS2 project, I would imagine that the developers would have had to rewrite too much of it for comfort in the super short deadline that they were forced to meet. Which might have led to the PS2 version being much worse off in the end. Great video, by the way. It plays into one of the major reasons that I enjoy coming onto this channel: I can check out interesting perspectives on games that I had only vaguely heard of in the past and never bothered with. Even if I don't think that I'll be checking out "Driver 2" anytime soon (it's just not my kind of game), it still seems like an important enough title that I'm glad I was able to hear such a nuanced opinion on it.

[@LibraScope]

Hehehe, thanks :D That's definitely a good point. I do think in the end the best option would've probably been to give the game much more time. I don't think that time would've fixed the performance and such too much; given the severely pulled back draw distance, they were likely already at the end of the PS1's power with little wiggle room. An extra year could've maybe helped it reach the PS2 successfully though, which could've been transformative with that extra time. Games like Tony Hawk 3 come to mind as a sequel to a successful PS1 title, that made the jump to PS2 without disaster. It didn't need to be the greatest looking game, because the boosted performance, draw distance, updated physics, etc. really helped it stand out. Not sure how much time that game got though.

[@majine.2606]

Yeah, the most annoying thing about the game industry is how little resources the developers get. Makes you wonder just how many mediocre titles could have been salvaged if the publishers gave more of a toss.@@LibraScope

[@LibraScope]

@@majine.2606 I fully believe the number would be staggering. Not EVERY game, because sometimes you're stuck working on a licensed product you don't care about. or maybe the foundation of an idea just isn't solid enough or whatever. But I think there are a wealth of games that were so close to being great, but didn't get that focused push they really needed.

[@Xegethra]

I think they should have done a PC release. The first Driver got one. It was a little different in handling but still very close, so a PC port of Driver 2 I don't think would have been so bad.

[@angryretrogamer7313]

I'm building a PS1 collection and today was time to play Driver 2. One of the first missions, escape the garage I think it's called took me probably 50 tries. I was thinking the game shouldn't be this hard this early on. Then came the Chase the intruder mission and I had trouble again. Even though this game is feeling awfully hard, it's still fun trying and trying to beat the missions. I enjoyed your review thank you and well done.

[@LibraScope]

@@angryretrogamer7313 Nice! I hope you continue to enjoy the game, and find it rewarding! I appreciate your taking the time to watch the video and drop a comment!

[@NFS4LFE]

REDriver 2 is such a breath of fresh air that I can never go back to my original PS1 copy or an emulation.

[@LibraScope]

Totally fair!

[@mikelarrutiromero9430]

I am currently playing this on my phone. Let me tell you, upscaled to 1440 or 1080, bilinear texture filtering, cpu overclocked to about 170% is amazing. I really recommend using a patch code to extend the rendering distance so you can see a little far away. Looks great in Havana

[@RacinCollieStudios]

There's a fan project called "ReDriver 2" and it's basically a PC port/reengineering of Driver 2, with a solid 60fps, High quality textures, etc. It even has the ability to skip cutscenes and has ultra mach jesus loading times, It's even got a good modding community behind it.

[@LibraScope]

Yeah, I mention it at the end of the video ;)

[@5Puff]

wdym "solid 60fps" lmao

[@ivanangelov8825]

I dropped last year Driv3r from my PC. I was dragging it for lot's of years, but last year I decided I don't want to play it anymore. But Driver 2? I still keep it and play it from time to time, despite I never beat the game cleanly, but at least, thanks to cheats, I played every mission.

[@LibraScope]

That's fair :) Driver 3 is a rough game, for sure. And using cheats in Driver 2 is definitely a fun way to play it.

[@chamclamtv]

Yo dog, that "TAin't" in the thumbnail goes so hard

[@LibraScope]

Lol :D

[@meyers0781]

the low draw distance for me aged so poorly but the skybox adding some buildings is really good to compensate plus there are two fanmade remakes: Redriver, the more faithful stable edition, it's complete, support both PS1 Driver games (require the game files), and playable to the end OpenDriver, the one that tries to expand the draw distance, in open alpha as of now.

[@Rightchickenwing]

13:28 Ah yes doing save states is a life saver for the emulator

[@HygorBH]

There's actually a fanmade PC port for Driver 2 called "RedDriver 2". It fixes EVERYTHING. No lag issues. It has increased draw distance and runs perfectly at 30fps without fail.

[@LibraScope]

;)

[@HygorBH]

@@LibraScope I hope you get the chance to download it. It's amazing. I play it from time to time. You can find a tutorial on how to install on KZbin somewhere

[@LibraScope]

@@HygorBH Hahaha, I replied with a wink initially because I talk about ReDriver for the last section of the video.

[@HygorBH]

@@LibraScope Oops. Kinda gave away that I commented this BEFORE i finished the video, didn't I? LOL

[@LibraScope]

@@HygorBH Lol, it's fine.

[@VortexStory]

ReDriver 2 and Open Driver are two different projects. Open Driver "could" be ReDriver 1 & 2 at 60 FPS, but it is still under development!

[@LibraScope]

The information on all of these decompilation related projects is a mess, lol. At this point I can't remember where I got the info that Open Driver and ReDriver were the same thing. But either way, thanks for clearing that up, and it'll be going in the pinned comment along with a credit to you!

[@seandoole6504]

I played this game as a kid (just as you did) and came back fifteen years later to beat it. Parts of it were a cake walk, but I came to realize Driver 2 fits the category of games where they have to cheat to be difficult. If luck is the sole determining factor for game completion, not overcoming a challenge with skill, there's no reward.

[@LibraScope]

What can I say other than that I generally agree. The game isn't always cheating when it's challenging. But it does often enough to be kinda frustrating.

[@ivanangelov8825]

Lately I dropped finally Driv3r from my PC. Driver 2 is still there, and I am planning to use some mods, that expand it in a way. In my opinion Driver 2 is the best of the series. I would even love a sequel game based and expanded on Driver 2 mechanics, engine and overall quality.

[@MYKE_88]

Awesome review! 👍 always loved Driver 1 & 2, especially 2 with the secret areas, cars, etc. Could never pass the 1st mission in driver 🤣🤣

[@GPrime-]

I was the same as you, I had Driver 1 & 2 before I even had GTA 3 or Vice City. Still play these on ePSXe with ps4 controller hooked up

[@Coolness68]

I actually returned the game when I first bought it because of the terrible graphics thinking there was something wrong with the disc and got it exchanged. That's when I realized that THAT was the best the graphics would be LOL.

[@tesseus9]

I still remember playing Driver 1 and 2 on my PS1 when I was a kid, to be honest, in that time It didn't bother me a bit the unstable framerate.. They were different... Times I guess, I couldn't beat Driver 1 back then for some reason that I don't remember but Driver 2 I could, my favourite was Driver 2 back then because of all new gameplay aspects like getting out of the car, the secrets, specially that mini cooper in Havana and even sitting on a chair lol.. etc, I'm 29 years old nowadays and play them on my PS3 as the rest of my PS1 catalog of games and simply enjoy them more than actual ones.

[@LibraScope]

It's hard for me to decide whether I like the Mini, or the Chevelle style secret car in Chicago more. And yeah, performance back then in most games was rough. Quite a few games even had to lock to 20fps, so especially as kids who almost certainly didn't know what a framerate was, it was easy to overlook for such fresh experiences.

[@derbydriver]

Driver and Driver 2 are perfect examples of games that have a certain mojo that causes players to overlook their faults. These games were punishing, bad looking and poorly performing… but man oh man the driving felt so good. Sliding a big heavy old American land barge around, losing hub caps, crashing through alleyways full of crates and other breakables while a generic 70’s car chase flick soundtrack trumbles along… it’s excellent. Driver: San Francisco didn’t really capture the vibe of Driver 1 and 2, but at least the spirit of driving was mostly the same and the game built around it was CONSIDERABLY better in every way.

[@LibraScope]

@@derbydriver Fair, I'd say :)

[@SolAirCx560]

I had an issue with slow down when i was playing it on PS2. So I switched to my PS3, and the game didn't have any issues with FPS delay

[@LibraScope]

That's cool! I suspect it's possible that different revisions of the PS3 handle the game differently. Because my PS3 doesn't run the game well at all, lol.

[@RAEMONDORMIN]

We need a remake of driver 1&2 like they did Tony hawks pro skater

[@LibraScope]

@@RAEMONDORMIN That would be cool :)

[@SpanglesYT]

I played and beat Driver 2 when GTA3 released and my parents never bought me a ps2 with gta3, so i had to deal with it for years until i could afford it. It was a fine but hard game.

[@LibraScope]

Indeed!

[@SDRIFTERAbdlmounaim]

i also never finished it, but played it alot as a kid, problem was i never had the Disc2 ... so i always stopped in the story at the Disc1 content 😂

[@LibraScope]

Oooof, that sounds rough :D That's kinda similar to how it is with my copy of Legend of Dragoon. Late in the game you're required to regularly swap discs to go to different areas of the world (I have NO idea why they did it that way). But some of my discs were scratched in just the wrong places, so it would crash specifically when swapping the discs at the end of the game.

[@eduardogallardo11386]

The thing that I found quirky and intersting is that driver difficulty is well programmed and even fair in a way, compared with the Dark Souls difficulty which is artificial and more like a bad design I mean the last Driver mission is almost pure RNG not really skill based but is just that one not the whole game, unlike Dark Souls physics and hit detection, so for me is almost imcomprehensible why some people praise Dark Souls difficulty but they get upset blaming old games difficulty which was more fair and mostly (not entirely) skill based most of the time, is incoherent for me seeing people beating DS with drums or other weird controllers but saying that System Shock has horrible unusable controls 🤔

[@LibraScope]

I'm not really sure I have much to say about this comment, because I don't think Dark Souls (as a whole) has bad design, and I don't think it's really directly comparable to Driver. And as someone who grew up on games much older than Driver, old games were regularly more unfair than fair. How one personally feels about the controls of a game like System Shock says little about the game's difficulty or balance, and everyone is going to be coming at these games with different levels of experience. So mashing all of these points of comparison together speaks more to your personal taste, than the quality or balance of any of these games themselves. It's great that you're able to enjoy older games in spite of their quirks :)

[@eduardogallardo11386]

@@LibraScope I agree on Dark Souls as a whole is not only well designed but an important game for video game history, the issue is the difficulty which is badly designed because its rather artificial, also with the topic of old games being fair its because (at least since from my perspective) of the generational transition between arcade and home consoles, old arcade games were designed aiming towards a balance between skill and fairness in order to keep the player engaged, home console games tend to be longer and engage the player not primarily by skill but by a narrative, supported by cutscenes, replayability, characters leveling systems etc. lastly its not how I feel about DS or SS its about the logic of blame a game for its complex control scheme and praising other which is played on porpuse in a more complex control scheme and saying that playing the last one is a skill achievment while the other is a lacking mess, I dont see why that complex control scheme is unjustifiable on one case but totally justifiable in the other while the idea (in both cases must be) is be able to play beyond the controls and show how its not only possible masterize a game but doing it in an stylish way, in the end its not important either if people complain about SS control scheme because SS is relevant today for fps game design and his mechanics and systems are sadly not being overcomed but rather the core of every fps out there since 1994, its just annoying that people cant see that but in the end the important judge is time not press or "specialist analysis" of the industry so sorry for this dabble writing I guess is just a random comment on the internet, I'll apreciate your work because I believe its more important the individualize interpretation of a game than the mass media opinion

[@LibraScope]

@@eduardogallardo11386 I dunno. Arcade games are actually notorious for being intentionally UNFAIR, in order to drive the player to spend more money on the machine to keep going. And that design carried over to home console games until the mid-90's where the PS1 and N64 started to change that. I also don't see what's artificial about most Dark Souls balance related to difficulty. There are absolutely aspects that don't work. A good example is Demon's Souls using instant kill bottomless pits way too often. Elden Ring's last third is also absolutely artificially inflated in terms of average boss damage per second. Like, I absolutely get what you're trying to get at. But the games industry has always had a mix of titles that are very unfair, and games that aren't. Generally, that balance has gone further and further in the direction of being balanced and fair, as the industry has progressed. Aside from things like live service titles.

[@chrispatterson4989]

I'd absolutely love a remake of the driver series. Such great games, limited by the hardware of the time. Just release them with 60fps and unlimited draw distance and it'd be amazing 🤩

[@LibraScope]

Yeah, I think remakes could do a lot for them, and help remind people why Driver got so big in the first place :D

[@NoName-ik2du]

If you never played it, I'd encourage you to try out Driver: San Francisco. The gameplay trailers when it came out made it look super gimmicky (since you could jump from car to car like the Matrix), but I decided to pick it up a few years ago, and it was really fun. Easily my favorite driving game on PS3.

[@wabbit234]

I had no trouble getting through the game as a kid so I spent a lot of this video thinking "skill issue". Not that your criticisms aren't valid, and I wonder if fiddling with the emulated clock speed didn't cause more issues for you than it solved. I still love this game, even if it is a bit jank.

[@LibraScope]

Everyone's gonna have different skill levels, so yeah, as long as it isn't used to invalidate people's thoughts or criticisms, it's fair to mention disparities :) As for your thoughts on the clock speed, it might've had a negative impact, but I'm gonna say probably not. The game's performance being inconsistent is really the major element that impacts playability, and it's inconsistent basically no matter what. Either way, I'm glad ReDriver makes it so much easier to play. Thanks for watching the video, and for commenting!

[@mplewp]

The chase in rio was so hard 4 me as a kid. . Great memmories tho . & the graphix dont matter 😂. Back then this was hightech

[@Supervideo1491]

If every chase mission had a dynamic AI that follows unscripted paths, doesn't inflict flat percentage of damage to target cars and alters their navigation paths if the targeted car crashed, the game would've been better...

[@LibraScope]

I don't wholly disagree, though I think the dynamic AI is also just bad enough at times that it could also make for a wildly inconsistent experience. The one boon afforded by the scripted chases is that outside of their small variations, they'll never break on you.

[@NoName-ik2du]

Driver 2 feels like it would have been an excellent release for the Dreamcast. I played _a ton_ of Driver 2 as a kid (mostly "Take a Ride" mode because I wasn't good enough to get past the harder missions). The difficulty curve in the game was all over the place. I always thought it would have been cool if the scripted chases would turn into dynamic chases when you hit the target car. The car would then dynamically try to get back to the scripted path, and when it did the scripted path would take back over. The atrocious framerate and draw distance were the biggest downsides to the game, so Re-Driver looks very interesting to me.

[@LibraScope]

Yeah, the Dreamcast would've definitely been a really nice home for Driver 2!

[@timothymcnaughton531]

I feel like Driver 1 also had a lot of super cheap, unnecessarily difficult missions. Or at least it definitely felt that way when I was 14.

[@LibraScope]

You're not entirely wrong. Driver 1's controls are a bit more jank. And while you often have the option to choose one mission instead of another, once you save you can't go back. So it's really easy to get stuck for hours on one of the handful of missions in Driver 1 that are really tough or unfair.

[@PurpleWolfy]

You should also give it a try to Driver Syndicate :)

[@LibraScope]

Ohhh, I'd never seen that before. Interesting!

[@PurpleWolfy]

@@LibraScope I found out about it a week ago also lol .

[@cjmarsh504]

I miss playing games like this

[@LibraScope]

It certainly is satisfyingly simple and straightforward :)

[@cjmarsh504]

@@LibraScope Yep, I used to play driver 2 for fun because of the police

[@AlexanderSchmidt-h1n]

Bro i litteraly played driver 2 damn near everyday between the ages of like 5-9 & was today years old when i found out you could actually sit on the patio chairs, But seriously what purpose would this have had honestly? Its not like thier was any tailing or stalking missions that revolved you being on foot.

[@LibraScope]

@@AlexanderSchmidt-h1n I'd assume it was just a hidden Easter Egg a developer put in for fun. But it's always possible it's a vestigial remnant from expanded on foot mechanics.

[@AlexanderSchmidt-h1n]

@LibraScope it's a possibility I'm sure wasn't fully cut or something.

[@Firealone9]

Driver 3 review now? Subscribing

[@LibraScope]

I definitely plan on it at some point! I mostly just have to find the time, and work out whatever kinks I'm likely to find when it comes to playing the PC port. I appreciate the sub!

[@R3TR0--93]

Redriver2 is a PC port mod for this game and fixes tons of bugs the ps1 port had and allows better draw distance and frame rate

[@LibraScope]

Yup, I talk about it in the last section of the video ;)

[@karelpipa]

8:52 this is the mission that lost my interest in the game. Atrocious Framerate and i didnt know what to do

[@LibraScope]

Totally fair and understandable, lol.

[@ahmedsamir6011]

Did you tried ReDriver 2 on pc? Just better and better

[@LibraScope]

Yup, I talked about it for several minutes at the end of the video actually ;)

[@Rightchickenwing]

7:54 I would totally be rage quitting with this game I reckon 😂

[@LibraScope]

I suspect most people do. It's absolutely not an easy game to finish.

[@Rightchickenwing]

4:15 Oh wow I see what you mean by the draw distance.

[@LibraScope]

Yeah, it's very low, lol.

[@markkoetsier6475]

7:37 We're gonna keep going straight :D 7:39 We're gonna keep going str- DO A 90 DEGREE TURN D:

[@Lucky_9705]

They really should have just delayed the game by a year or so and shifted development from the PS1 to the PS2

[@LibraScope]

That likely would've helped for sure! Although the issue there is with hardware adoption rates. For most games, only a small percentage of the people who own the console will pick it up. Which means for a new (at the time) console like the PS2, you're talking about a portion of an already small market of current PS2 owners. Considering Driver 1 had higher sales on PS1 than PS2s that had even been sold by the end of 2001 (almost double), they probably thought it was going to lose them more money to make it a PS2 game, which would've forcefully cut their projected sales by probably 70% or more.

[@5Puff]

If I were you I'd use Duckstation to emulate these kind of games, since you can turn off texture warping and make the game perform and look a LOT better through it

[@Rightchickenwing]

And I think it's Driver 3 they have an interesting fourth person perspective mode or something 🤔 where you see through the eyes of another player

[@LibraScope]

You might be referring to Driver: San Francisco, where the main gimmick is that Tanner can transfer his consciousness to other drivers on the road, basically allowing the player to swap cars at will. Driver 3 only had first and third person, I'm pretty sure.

[@Ro_Morgen]

Excellent review!!!!!!! I LOVE this game. It's flawed as hell and as a kid I couldn't beat that mission in Rio where you have to chase and destroy the car through that cliff. I've recently finished the game with REDriver 2 and it was a really good experience. With fewer load times and stable frame rate the game is absolutely great. Definitely TOO much for a PS1

[@LibraScope]

Nice! Congratulations on finally beating it!

[@dmer-zy3rb]

neither driver 1 or 2 have "digital analog steering" you propably just havent configured it right in your emulator. just watch the front tires, its analog.

[@LibraScope]

Well firstly, I know how to configure emulator controls. Secondly, I've played these games primarily on official hardware and it was exactly the same, so... I don't know what you'd want me to see with the front tires.

[@dmer-zy3rb]

@@LibraScope that it turns further the more you push your analog stick to one side, like in any modern racing game.

[@LibraScope]

@@dmer-zy3rb I just tested it, and unfortunately you're incorrect. I checked both Driver 1 and 2 in RetroArch, and triple checked that my settings were correct in both games. On top of that, I mirrored those exact controller settings on games I know have analog support (Spyro 1 and Crash 3), and both of those immediately exhibited analog movement. In Driver 1 and 2 from a complete stop with the camera facing the front of the car, you can see there's an enormous dead zone (which isn't my controller, because my controller deadzones are configurable and they're really low), and then once it starts picking up inputs, the tires gradually move to full lock in that direction. You cannot hold them in any position between no steering and full lock. They do GRADUALLY move to full lock, and it's a decent amount more gradual in Driver 2 as I suggested in the video. But that has to do with their digital acceleration curve, and isn't analog control. If it was actually analog, similar to being able to hold your walk speed in Spyro or Crash, you'd be able to hold the wheels in a position that isn't one of the two extremes. Everything below is a secondary discussion that's related. Feel free to skip if you're not interested. All that being said, these types of animations in games aren't always tied to the actual controls. Most movement in most games isn't animation dependent. Instead, the movement is made, and then the animations are meticulously crafted to visually match. An example of a game where the animations are independent would be Halo. You can look down and see your legs in Halo, and they'll generally move according to your inputs. But in reality they're just for show. Likewise, RAGE Engine games from Rockstar use Euphoria Physics, which IS animation dependent when it comes to inputs. That's why the games feel so sluggish. Driving games generally have to match the fidelity of their physics to the fidelity of the geometry of their environments, if they're using the real car position and wheel positions and such as part of the physics process for steering and grip and whatnot. This mismatch for example is why with the latest Forza, Turn10 claimed they had to redo all of the track surfaces, because their updated tire and suspension models were so sensitive that the cars started juddering around on low-poly 'bumps' that were invisible to the naked eye. Because of this, especially with early games and modern arcade-y games, animations on the vehicles are often similarly independent from the physics and the animations you see, as they are in Halo. The fact that the animation on the cars wheels in Driver is digitally driven with an acceleration curve, does indeed suggest that the controls are the same way. But looking at them is not a foolproof method for demonstrating what we're trying to demonstrate here. Ultimately though, if you play a lot of sims on controller like I do, you can feel that the lack of true analog support in Driver while playing, because you can feel the car's wheels refusing to hold at an intermediate position between full lock and neutral steering, just like the animations on the wheels show.

[@dmer-zy3rb]

@@LibraScope hey did my answer come through or was it deleted because of the link to a proof video i recorded?

[@LibraScope]

@@dmer-zy3rb I can't find it in my Held for Review section or anywhere else, and I didn't personally delete it. So nope, it didn't come through :( If it was a YT link, I'm not sure why it would've been flagged for auto-delete without my permission. But if it wasn't, they're trying to cut down on spam that leads to scams and such, so that would probably be why.

[@deltacx1059]

Pretty easy to rip it a new one with the knowledge of modern performance.

[@thesis4349]

You to take 8 hours to finish it? lol that's a lot, i remember finishing in in an afternoon, like less than 3 hours.

[@LibraScope]

Then everybody clapped 🙏😆

[@Xegethra]

Driver 2 should have had a PC release, like the first game did. It might have run better then.

[@LibraScope]

Absolutely true.

[@josephwj7199]

Uh... I tried to leave a comment, and it looks like it got spam filtered. Damn. It took time to type up, too.

[@LibraScope]

It's in my normal comments section, so it wasn't filtered. I'll reply to it and see if that fixes it :)

[@Rightchickenwing]

I do not remember much of Driver, don't think I played the sequel 😃

[@LibraScope]

They're definitely worth trying. As similar games took more and more after GTA, Driver 1 and 2 have steadily become more and more unique. But they are definitely difficult, which is worth keeping in mind.

[@propergordon]

every copy of driver 2 is personalized because the missions depend on luck lol

[@heavymetalnewsdesk]

I beat Driver 2, and I think it's a much better game than GTA, because the driving physics are better, and it's a lot safer for kids to play than gta

[@dlaldlaldlanutsntnstn1418]

Someone decompiled driver 2 and ported it to pc just fyi. It's called REDRIVER2

[@LibraScope]

@@dlaldlaldlanutsntnstn1418 Yeah, I talk about that at the end of the video ;)

[@dlaldlaldlanutsntnstn1418]

@@LibraScope my bad 😂

[@RiC3R69]

We're Almost the Same

[@Rightchickenwing]

Hello mate! 🤛🤛

[@LibraScope]

Hi!

[@jjohnson71958]

driver 2 was great for ps2 or psx

[@FuelAirSparkTime]

Why are you so harsh about sitting in chairs my friend

[@LibraScope]

Harsh? I liked it :D It's just silly.

[@dr2okevin]

Why dose it look worse than Driver 1?

[@LibraScope]

It could be that most cars don't use the moving reflections textures anymore, that simulated shiny paint. So they look flat in comparison.

[@sea4our]

oh so ya'll mfs just learning about Driver 2 huh?

[@Playr0ne]

Typical console experience 😄