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Driver: Parallel Lines

Driver: Parallel Lines is the fourth game in the somewhat uneven Driver series and to distance it from the less than perfect Driv3r, Reflections have dumped the increasingly implausible Tanner-the-undercover-cop storyline. Parallel Lines sets you as TK, a young small-time criminal with plenty of driving skill and criminal ambitions. The setting is New York of 1978 with cars, fashion and hairstyles all convincingly imitating "That 70's Show".

The story is very conventional: TK soon ends up as fall guy, with the rest of his "friends" setting him up to take "one for the team". TK ends up for 28 years in prison for a murder he didn't do, and spends the time well plotting his revenge. The tale continues in New York of 2006, with new cars, new fashion and new hairstyles with TK bent on revenge. Not the most original storyline around, but works as a backdrop while TK slowly plots to take out his old partners in crime, one by one.

Hmm, this looks familiar...

Driver: Parallel Lines bears a more than passing resemblance to the Grand Theft Auto series. While the earlier Driver games had less in common with Rockstar's masterpieces, Parallel Lines has "evolved" the series to a pretty blatant GTA clone. And hey, if the concept is proven to work, why not? Problem is, as soon as the game is identified to be heavily reusing ideas from an existing hit title, it automatically gets compared to the original, and in many cases the comparison isn't favorable.

While Driver: Parallel Lines ticks most of the required checkboxes with a large city that you can roam freely, wide selection of cars, plenty of side missions, hidden "stars" to collect (and even goes a bit further by allowing you to upgrade cars with high performance parts), the package as a whole fails to improve over the GTA franchise.

Yep, it looks like Grand Theft Auto.

"Intense Violence" - adding some extra holes to a car during chase.

The Driver: Parallel Lines box indicates that the game is filled with all kinds of filth. M - Mature, with "Blood, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language". Sure, there is blood and violence, but the rest of the naughty bits are limited to parts of storyline portrayed only in pre-rendered cutscenes and they feel like a cheap shock marketing attempt. The main meat of the game is still just driving and shooting things, and in attempt to keep things gritty and "real", even the violence is not that graphic.

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