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Driv3r - Atari's Savior, Or Lara Croft-Style Travesty?

Posted by simoniker on from the driven-to-distraction dept.

Thanks to Eurogamer for its hands-on preview of a near-complete build of Atari's PlayStation 2 title Driv3r, as the article notes: "Never before has an entire company's fate rested so heavily on the release of one product [financials reveal $20 million for 'production costs'... and 'marketing costs... double that amount'], but Reflection's long-overdue sequel is that kind of game, and Atari is doubtlessly slightly peeved that... it has had to watch from the sidelines while Rockstar, Sony and even Activision have cleaned up in mission-based driving stakes." Although the previewer rhapsodizes: "Anyone who loves pure driving will have a fantastic time in Driv3r", the out-of-car elements are another story: "The third-person control system feels sluggish [and] the combat/shooting is currently nowhere near the standard it needs to be", and the preview ends with the warning (though it's possible the gameplay "may well come together at the last minute"): "Releasing [the game] in an unpolished state would be a crime of Angel Of Darkness proportions."

5 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Atari cannot be saved by Txiasaeia · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Atari has apparently decided to cut back on video game titles by 20% and the number of PC games to only 20%. Driv3r isn't going to help this company as they go down, down, and further down, Interplay style. Not that I'm bitter.

    --
    Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
    1. Re:Atari cannot be saved by superpulpsicle · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I am mighty confused. Are they claiming that UT2004, dragonball Z, backyard baseball and a host of other well known titles aren't profitable???

      Why bank on Driv3r? It's like GTA with only the driving action.

  2. only 20 Million this time? by Enrico+Pulatzo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    At least it wasn't E.T.

  3. The irony is not lost here... by OneFix+at+Work · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Reflections was at one time a part of the old Psygnosis...DMA Design (now Rockstar) was also part of Psygnosis...

    When Reflections and DMA Design were both with Psygnosis, Psygnosis was heavy into the Amiga.

    Core Design (later developed Tomb Raider at Eidos) was also once a big Amiga developer...

    Wonder if Team 17 will rise again...they seem to be real big with the "Worms" thing...have been since the first one...A Halo-ish version of Alien Breed might be kewl... :)

  4. Here's the problem by nobodyman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Technically, the Gamecube has 48MB of RAM, but the problem is that 24MB of the ram consists of relatively fast 1T-SRAM with a bandwidth of 2.6GB/sec and another 16MB of standard DRAM that has a bandwidth of only 81MB/sec. Here's a some good info on it

    In contrast, the PS2 has 32MB of ram that runs at 3.2GB/sec (more linkage).

    So, yeah, if your trying to feed geometry to the GPU the slower ram may not cut it. What some developers do (for example, lucasarts when they made jedi starfighter) is use the slower ram as a ramdisk "swap drive", or just use it to hold sound. In essence, though, you've got 8 megs less than a ps2.

    My guess is this: If theywanted to make Driv3r for the Gamecube you could definitely do it (and make it look damn good), but it wouldn't be as easy as doing a simple port from the PS2 version. While profits may not have been the stated reason, perhaps revenue from the gamecube version were not worth the added cost/headache of porting.

    Dunno... It's all speculation on my part. But the slow RAM issue isn't bullshit, for what it's worth.