The Driver Syndicate
The long-dormant Driver series gets an old-school indie tribute
Android, iOS, PC
The Driver Syndicate’s developer has taken a safety instruction – to please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times – and made it a mantra. While the Driver games eventually enabled players to take to the streets on foot, this homage plants a thumb firmly on your car’s key fob and locks all the doors with you inside. There’ll be no shooting or hacking here – you’ve only your wheel and two pedals to assist in escaping the authorities.
As Thief successor Gloomwood has already shown, there’s a kind of reverse-punk to be found in nostalgia with the rose tint turned off. Rewards await those who reject genre best practice, eschew the comforts of modernisation and commit wholly to their ancient inspiration, sharp edges and all. So it is with The Driver Syndicate, which rewinds the clock to the year 2000, and Driver 2’s PlayStation release.
Nobody knows that game’s code better than Ilya Shurumov, or SoapyMan – the primary force behind last year’s Redriver 2, a fan project that ported its parent game to the PC for the first time. Working on the mod gave Shurumov an understanding of Driver’s physics engine, traffic AI, rubberbanding and the way muscle cars behave when thrown through the air, all of which has informed The Driver Syndicate. He does point out, however, that none of Driver’s
Ubisoft-owned code is used directly in his own game – merely a couple of sound files.
“I decided to put the cherry on top – crash and skidding sounds from Driver,” he explains. “I didn’t plan the game to be paid [for] at first, but if it goes on the market, this content has to be removed for sure.”
Screeching tyres or no, The Driver Syndicate
plays uncannily like its namesake. Where later entries in the series tended to feel softer, dulled by focus testing, SoapyMan has restored the terror of urban driving as Reflections originally imagined it – less like driving a car than steering a runaway train off the tracks.
The deceptively simple act of wrestling your vehicle around 90-degree streets occupies all of your attention, and demands hazard perception beyond the requirements of any driving standards agency. Other road users swerve, change lanes, cut across junctions and, if they have flashing blue lights, ram into your flanks. As in jujutsu, besting a pursuer is often a matter of using their own momentum against them. Shurumov likes the aggressive cop AI for the pressure it introduces to a chase – lighting a fire beneath the player’s bumper and pushing them into dangerous evasive manoeuvres.
Evidently, SoapyMan has located a sweet spot right at the edge of control. There’s a noticeable loss of steering at the highest speeds that wasn’t present even in Driver 2’s driving model, and the second of the game’s two currently playable missions attaches a trailer to your ride, which whips alarmingly back and forth as the police close in. This is MudRunner in fast-forward, and every bit as challenging as the premise suggests.
Unfortunately, the free February build of The Driver Syndicate features some unintentional loss of control, too. Playing with both a wired Xbox One controller and wireless Xbox 360 pad, we experience input issues which push our car off course and fire the brake button at random intervals – both major problems in a game that asks for precision at all times.
Yet despite its origins as an amateur project Shurumov developed in his spare time, The Driver Syndicate is built to an impressive standard, and deserving of the payment for which he still seems unsure whether to ask. Modders in the Driver Madness community, meanwhile, have built cities and cars to apply to Shurumov’s subtle physics. Whether or not its creator ever truly commits to finishing it, this tribute has real momentum.
QThere’s a kind of reverse-punk to be found in nostalgia with the rose tint turned off