rec.autos.simulators

I am not looking for a harcore racing sim, but I would like a game
with an open, freeform environment (like I-76 or Carmageddon) where I
can roam around a city freely, looking for amu***t off-road
(sidewalks, fields, etc.)  Does Driver constrain you to a rigid
"track-style" layout, or can you roam a city and leave the roads?  I
really liked Interstate 76 although it was not a real racing sim. I
found Carmageddon playable, although the drrving model in Carma was
sloppy.  Will I like Driver?

I do not have a steering wheel or pedal setup, does Driver work well
with just a joystick/keyboard?

--
Oliver Nikolic
DP-MAX Computers
http://www.racesimcentral.net/
BeoRocket Racing Team (retired)
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

The driving model is, as someone aptly described it, realistic in a
"Starsky and Hutch" manner. The cars will slide around a lot, lose
hubcaps, and generate a lot of smoke. Lotsa fun, IMO. With the default
settings, an "auto-handbrake" feature is enabled, which makes the cars
oversteer into corners and hang the tail out. If you disable this
feature, the behavior is more realistic, but less entertaining.

Actually, I find driver works best with keyboard input. At its core,
the game is a console title, which shows in many aspects. If you want
to be sure whether or not you like this game, download the demo (12 -
15 MB, IIRC) before opening the box. In the full game, in addition to
what you see in this demo, you get three more cities, different cars
(though they're all very similar in their behavior), a series of
missions linked by a story and various driving games.

--
Wolfgang Preiss   \ E-mail copies of replies to this posting are welcome.

If all you want to do is explore, than get Midtown Madness, because driving
around the cities in Driver without some mission or objective
is plain boring because of the simplistic map architecture and design.
Driver's cities mostly constrain you to the roads or the sidewalks. Save the
occasional lawn or garage, you can't drive into any places in the cities
(like a stadium). Cities follow a STRICT grid pattern, so you can basically
gun it from one end of the city to the next. This grid limitation really
rears its ugly heads when you find that the Brooklyn Bridge is only one lane
wide going one way, so you literally have traffic moving (very slowly) in a
single file. Architecturally, there's absolutely is nothing fancy beyond the
leveled sidewalk or roads, not even the New York City map was interesting. I
expected a park or a mini outdoor flea market to drive through with sidewalk
stairs to accomadate changing elevation and such. A lot of the problem with
the maps is all these artificial barricades that ring around paces that you
most likely want to drive to. I mean, who the hell barricades their home or
park? It would be less annoying if Reflection didn't use the same exact
stone barricade for all the maps for all their barricading situations. In a
sense, you are on a somewhat track-style layout because you can't go
anywhere you want like in MM. Most of the time you're either on the road or
on the sidewalk with the dreadful traffic cars that are basically moving
rocks that can't think or react at all. The driving model is about identical
to the one found in Destruction Derby.

It's a ported Playstation game, it'll obviously play well on a digital
controller. Analog controllers will control the game better.