What a surprise this game turned out to be. I always thought it was one of those lesser spin off games or that it was just mediocre and forgettable but it turned out to be highly engaging and a blast to play through it's short length. What makes me like it as much as I do? It has a fun soundtrack, an enjoyable and entertaining story and the open world is on the optional side. The last one surprised me a lot. I was expecting it to be an open world crime game on the portable like those Grand Theft Auto games but instead it went back to the style of being a more "linear" narrative focused car chase game.
The soundtrack fits the world and the recreated 70s vibe pretty well. I always did get hyped up whenever Low Rider started to play.
Story is pretty entertaining while nothing amazing, it was fun in the moment. Seeing the dynamic between Ray and Slink as they work together to make money, get of jams, try to make it big and avoid getting wasted by the various gangs made for an entertaining set up. The voice acting and comic panel cutscenes do a good job at getting the basic beats across. Having the comic panel cutscenes was a smart move since the in engine would've just looked a lot worse anyway especially when compared to the couple that are there.
The real surprise which I've mentioned before is that this is NOT an open world game. Driver 76 does what I always have a soft spot for and have it be optional. Instead the gameplay revolves around a series where all of them involves a vehicle and you are almost always on a timer. I always did love timers in this franchise or anything involving vehicles since the whole point is to go fast and be efficient while doing it and having timers is a great way to encourage the player to get good and not sleepwalk through the missions.
It also helps that the game checkpoints during missions and when there is a part of the game where it feels like the objective is taking too long even when the ride is going smoothly, you'll get a good amount of extra time to complete the next objective.
There's a decent amount of variety here too like escourting assassins, driving pick up trucks while avoiding detection of enemy gangs, hijack and delivering trucks, collecting things and avoid annoying your passengers, vehicle tailing, traditional races, wrecking supermarkets. There's enough variety here as well the game not being overly long so the game never gets overly monotonous or overstays it's welcome.
Some issues is that the game doesn't run the most stable. There's framerate drops and a fair share of pop in. This could be the emulator but this could be both the game and the emulation quirks. The on foot controls are "tolerable" but not good since the game is mostly car chases, it's awkwardness never really sets in. The shooting isn't great but it's fine due to reasons I mentioned earlier.
There are two missions that can sour the experience that are "Arms Dealer" and the final mission. The former is bad due to on rails shooting section especially when dealing the cars later in the level as you are entering and leaving a tunnel. If you try to this with the base assault rifle the mission gives you, it will be impossible to finish due to the bullet spread not hitting your intended when you put the crosshair on them. You will be riddled with bullets and your shots will only hit on occasion. If you just do main missions, you'll get a grenade launcher and it's best to cheese the early enemies and the ones in the tunnels using this, if not it's an unwinnable mission. It can be a misleading on the game's part.
The final mission while fine in theory, it's a very trial and error mission where if you make one wrong detour as you follow the helicoptor, misintrepret it's route or try to readjust after being lead off it's trail, it will be a series of mission restarts. I get it's the final mission but due to long it can feel, it feels like you need to be a perfectionist even though the rest of the game didn't require you to do this.
Overall, despite some technical issues and a few sour eggs here and there, Driver 76 turned out to be a very enjoyable surprise and easily one of the better 3rd party developed games on the PSP.
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