How did I miss this? The Driver franchise returns in April!

I was just thinking about the old Driver games the other day, and was surprised to see there's a new version coming out in April!

It looks fairly decent, there are a bunch of licensed cars this time around (Tanner's ride appears to be a classic yellow Dodge Challenger), and Tanner has a whole new ability...which he earned after a coma. (I know, I know, kinda cheesy, but who cares as long as it works...) Apparently, this ability allows you to jump from car to car in real time, and instantly take over the controls.

The video on youtube illustrates it a bit better than I can explain it, but it shows going from an overhead map of the city, and jumping right into an ongoing police chase between two late-model Dodge Charger police cars and a classic GT500. The player jumps to the lead car, spins out, then jumps to the next cop car in the chase. They finally shut it down by taking control of a semi, and smashing into the GT500 headfirst.

I really hope this game is successful, as I loved the Driver games as a kid.

WIth Shift 2 coming out in March, this in April, and Dirt 3 in May, looks like this spring will be fairly decent for those of us who can't afford to go to the track as much as we like.

Here's the video, amazing what slips your mind when you've been awake for over a day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18IV-mxpTm0&feature=relmfu

Driver 2 was an awesome game.

Wow that looks like that's gonna be a lot of fun. They also have licensed cars this time!

I remember playing those in college, always fun.

Is there any mention of bringing back Pikes Peak to DiRT 3? I want the entire run too, not just part of it like in DiRT.

Pikes Peak is one of my favorite all-time racing events.

Despite the mediocre reviews that Driver 3 and 4 got, I still really enjoyed messing around on those games too.

I just picked up Test Drive Unlimited 2 this past weekend. Great arcade racer if you want a huge map to drive around on, they fixed a lot of little issues I had about the first one. They added some off road racing as well (well, dirt roads would be more accurate) Super fun bombing down the dirt roads in an STI.

I played the original Driver (relatively recently, like, a couple years ago) and was... completely unimpressed. I kind of wrote off the series after that.

That said, this one looks badass. I think the first chase in that video was more interesting than the last chases I've seen in actual movies. I just hope they don't overdo it with that "shift" thing. I'll try the demo at least.

You wanna have some real fun, put on the first Driver, set it on chase, set chase cars to full aggressive, type S Shelly in the cheat menu, and select the "frieght train" cheat. Prepare to not be productive for the next 3 hours.