The Driver Syndicate is a very authentic feeling spiritual successor to the classic PS1 Driver games, complete with tail-happy car physics and epic police chases!
On PS1 there was really only one series to go to for full 3D car chases through an open world city – the Driver games. They saw you taking on the role of an undercover cop called Tannen and generally saw you chasing down bad guys while being chased by the cops yourself. Although the series struggled to stand up to the might of GTA games in the PS2 era onwards, the original PS1 games were classics and The Driver Syndicate does very much feel like a spiritual successor to them
The current build of The Driver Syndicate features a variety of different Singleplayer modes – Free Roam, Pursuit, Checkpoint Run, Trailblazer, Gates and Survival. It also has the infamously hard car park tutorial level (thankfully you don’t have to complete it to play the rest of the game) and one story campaign level. After a mission you can also watch a cinematic replay of your run or mess around with the Film Director mode. In the future SOAP, the developer, plans to add a full single player campaign, more vehicles and online multiplayer.
Visually The Driver Syndicate manages to maintain the aesthetic of the early Driver games, while managing to update the visuals slightly so that they look more like a PS2/PS3 era game. What matters most though is that it really feels like a Driver game – thanks to the devs custom game engine the bulky tail-happy muscle cars all feel exactly like they did in Driver 1 & 2 and the game world is authentic too. Driving around the city is much trickier than in the GTA games – cops will bust you for speeding, driving on the wrong side of the road or running red lights and lamp-posts and small trees won’t just collapse like paper when you hit them – they’ll wreck your car.
GTA may have eclipsed the Driver series in most ways but there’s something to be said about Driver’s cinematic muscle car focused driving experience. Much like the originals, the whole time you’re behind the wheel in The Driver Syndicate you feel like you’re a getaway driver in a classic movie. It’s feels great to be back behind the wheel.
Check Out a Gameplay Video Here
Download The Driver Syndicate Here (Windows)