I'm not sure if you are familiar with the Grand Theft Auto series, but if you are, Driver should be placed right between the "interesting" GTA2 and the "excellent" GTA3. Driver doesn't have any wandering around, jacking cars, or the (really blatant) references of the GTA games, but it DOES have a massively sweet damage/collision/driving engine. Even when I play it today, I can totally see where GTA3 got their whole in-car thing.
The big problem with the Driver game is that the cutscenes are stupid, the game loads a lot, and the missions just seem to involve racing against the clock to get to the next checkpoint. I have played a few slightly more interesting levels, but the majority are the same one again and again. Also missing is any way to remove Felony (Driver's way of measuring how angry the police are) from your meter. In GTA, you could go to the paint shop, ditch the car (PLEEEEAAASE add this way of losing Wanted in GTA4!! PLEASE!!) and get in a better one, or simply drive until you were out of sight for a while. In Driver, you don't have any of these niceties. Once you have it, it's there to stay, at least until you complete the mission (or SERIES of missions) that you were playing. This is especially annoying when combined with the Let's Make A Clock with Not Enough Time On It To Do The Mission Clock, because it forces you to speed, run red lights, and drive the wrong way down one-way streets. Game programmers, it's cool to have time pressure, but it's better if you don't overdo it. There should be a mode that lets the player just leisurely go through the levels, besides Free Drive, which is sort of like GTA3 when you aren't on a mission, except in Driver you have to choose it from the main menu to play that way.
Why do I still crow about Driver when it has all these problems when compared to GTA3? Driver is a PS1 game, while GTA3 requires PS2. This is especially key because I don't actually have a TV of my own to play on, so the PS1 with its built-in minimonitor is awesome to lie in bed and play to the wee hours of the night (except when I pop out my sweet iBook and write websites on it!).
Anyway, to get back on track, Driver was good because it was finished over four years before GTA3 was released.
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