The more technology evolves, the lazier and shiftier people get. There was no day 1 patching in those days, so if you released a broken game, you had no excuse and faced the wrath of the people.
I was a kid when the first three drivers came out, so I was too stupid to care how broken Driv-three-arrrgh was. Me and my school friends had such a laugh finding glitches... so I guess that counts for something. Even though Atari are absolute wankers for ruining this franchise, at least we got Stuntman out of this, although badly timed.
@@Larry True but at least Duke Nukem Forever is a much better game than Driv3r. Sure Duke Nukem Forever is not the best not it not terrible either. Lazy Game Reviews (LGR) thinks the game not that bad. Here is video review on the game: ua-cam.com/video/q_EESRrn-Ck/v-deo.html
My eyes practically bugged right out of my head when you said that Driver was eventually re-branded as Watch_Dogs... dear God, it all comes full circle.
Mada Faka I played both versions, I love the game. Not because of nostalgia, just because I had genuine good fun. Your right. But Driver will be my favorite series EVER.
If you play the game 100% to how they want you to play missions, you should miss a lot of glitches too, but do anything "creative" and you're in a whole world of trouble.
Patched PS2 version on release day? No. I didn't have any issues with bugs. Perhaps regional versions for some odd reasons had issues but none of my friends in Norway had these bugs in the EU version at least.
DRIV3R was so broken, me and my cousin were convinced that we got a scratched copy. The missions would always bug out and the player would get stuck on the sidewalk.
One of the thugs is playing a video game in the mission Mad Dogg's Rhymes, he's rather displeased by it, commenting "How could Refractions mess up so bad?" and "Tanner, you suck ass!".
gta.wikia.com/wiki/Madd_Dogg's_Rhymes "One of the guards playing a video game remarks, "How could Refractions mess up so bad?" and "Tanner, you suck ass!" These are references to the poor reception of DRIV3R, which is considered a GTA Clone, where the protagonist's name is Tanner, and the game is made by Reflections Interactive." that is just pure gold
***** In the mission where you're breaking into Madd Dogg's mansion, a guy is playing Driv3r (or a copyright friendly imitation of it) and he is hating the experience. Yeah, as the others said, damn they were fast. If you search for a video of the mission mad Dog's Rhymes, you'll see it almost certainly, it's a brief cutscene, even, not just ambient dialogue.
I find the potshots amusing considering Reflections and DMA/Rockstar North used to be buddies back in their early days. Also, Reflections themselves took a shot at Driv3r as well, as there was an area in Parallel Lines that had a dumpster filled with copies of Driv3r.
I think it had more to do with the gameplay style as to why the driving wasn't good in Watch_Dogs. Like Mario Kart is a fun game but imagine Mario Kart driving physics in Grand Theft Auto
That's funny, I bought Driv3r for ps2, pretty close to it's launch, and didn't encounter any of these bugs. I only remember the story missions being incredibly hard difficulty-wise, and having fun in istanbul, driving in oncoming lane with the infinite car mass cheat. This video actually makes me want to check it out again :D
The one thing i remember most about all of this was that Rockstar and Reflections were sniping at each other in their games, too. Starting in GTA3 where Kenji sends you kill a "strangely animated" man who looked exactly like Tanner in Driver 2, making fun of his walk animations. Driv3r responded by hiding a bad knockoff of Tommy Vercetti (named "Timmy Vermicelli", get it?) around the game, and he had little orange floaties on his arms to reference that you couldn't swim in Vice City. Then San Andreas finished it with the mission where you sneak into Madd Dogg's mansion, and he's sitting on his couch playing Driv3r and raging about how terrible it is.
I remember playing GTA 3 and doing the kenji mission and thinking "oh shit, it's Tanner from driver! Does anyone else know about this?" My question was finally answered.😎
Atari today is not the same Atari back in the 80's. They're really Infogrames, a French company that bought the name in 2003 so that they could ride the old company's coat tails.
A Driver fan named RacingFreak found the early press demo of Driver 3 in an Xbox Development Kit very recently and its better looking than the final version. -More cars were planned. Many of the cars in the final version had different designs and handling. The car select movies are different to what we got. -There were better looking textures for the environments, cars, pedestrians and police. -The cutscenes, missions, characters and cities were VERY different looking. (Note: This is only a summary and the game files are still being explored. More content may appear.) Look for channels VortexStory, BetaDepot, Olanov and RacingFreak. RacingFreak is the guy who found it so I suggest you look at his channel then VortexStory for comparison as he talks about it also. Olanov found some music and BetaDepot put up some analysis videos of the preview build. VortexStory has a playlist called "Driv3r Beta and Press Demo Content." This is what to search. All their findings are documented on the playlist.
Someone needs to bring this back up. Nothing on the internet should ever die, and companies should have no right to touch archive sites or wikis. This is humanity's grand archive, the sum of human knowledge, and no one (legally or otherwise) should be allowed to mess with it.
PongoXBongo yes, The Internet archive is remarkably useless as soon as you start to research anything that is either obscure or controversial. A lot of content there is blocked by the owners of the domain. Some of the more obscure content is simply not archived before disappearing forever.
Off topic: Is anyone else tired of scrolling through the comments on a phone when suddenly a wild advertisement appears and resets the comments to the top, forcing you to scroll back down?
Sadly, the Driv3rGATE was a forecast of what the AAA game industry became today; publishers didn't learned with the 1982 "E.T" game, neither with "Driv3rgate", so everyone can be dang sure that they won't learn with Cyberpunk 2077.
I may as well throw in the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition that released full of bugs, oh and Battlefield 2042 that game was more broken than Rockstars GTA Trilogy The Definitive Edition, and boy that collection tells quite a story going all the way back to when Take 2 started taking down GTA SA, III, and Vice City mods. THEN removing the original versions, and the icing on the shit cake is that to this very day Rockstar STILL scams people.
You know, the mention of Watchdogs starting out as a Driver title made me wonder if there could be a Fact Hunt to be made out of new IPs that started as sequels in other franchises. Off the top of my head, I know Devil May Cry got its start from one of the earliest builds of a potential RE4 (it's more complicated than that, and obviously they didn't just slap a different title over a game originally meant to be RE, but the idea for it and some of the mechanics and settings came from an early build of RE4).
When I played watch dogs and especially watch dogs 2 it still to this day loosely reminds me of Driver San Francisco.. then to find out it's basically running on the same but modified engine.
At least with live updates there is real chance it will actually get fixed. Back in this era you didn't really get live updates or after release patches. ALso if a game is THIS unfinished then people still drag it through the mud like Cyberpunk 2077. We only give stuff a pass if it's mostly good and just needs a bit more polish.
"For the good of us all, releasing a game of this importance in such a woefully unfinished state should never be allowed to happen again" And as they say, the years start coming.
I bought a PS2 copy back in the day and I can assure you that I have never seen the glitches in this video. Sure there may have been some small bugs or clip throughs here and there but the ones shown here are ridiculous. No wonder it got such a backlash.
I'm gonna be honest, I owned the PS2 version and never had a single glitch like what I saw in this video. Game played really well for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I've played this game on PS2 and I loved it! But I was very young at that time and therefore didn't know all those bugs weren't supposed to be there. I didn't know about that whole scandal as well. I'm glad for the memories I could make with that game, but am kinda sad now knowing how much better that game could've been.
I remember being in my late teens, early 20s when this game came out, looking at it and thinking "this is going straight to the bargain bin." Boy was I right. Bullet dodged.
@@lookatme5939 Not sure playable is the right word in regard to 76. "It just works" is a bit more accurate. Update: ... Oh wait I am putting fun and playable into the same category. Said the same as you. Just with a quote. So nevermind
The irony that Atari rushing unfinished games out led to the Video Game Crash in the 1980s (With E.T and Pac Man) and cost them millions. Yet, even after that they didn't learn their damn lesson.They did it again a few years ago with Roller Coaster Tycoon World. I swear, AAA game companies have the memories of Goldfish.
True, but it's worth noting that the Atari of the PS2 era has nothing to do with the original Atari l, it's French company Infogrames rebranding itself.
I actually really enjoyed this game back in the day, I had San Andreas, but I found Driv3r more cinematic and gritty, and I played the first two drivers religiously, so I had a soft spot for it there too. It definitely could have been a better game had Atari not been a bunch of dummies
What really pissed me off about the whole scandal was being chewed out by customers as if I was personally responsible. I was managing a GAME store at the time and the company was pushing us to build up hype about the game and to point out the positive reviews. So after telling people how great Driver 3 was going to be, I had to eat crow when the game was launched and people started returning it; including myself, only keeping the collector's edition car figurine. The only other time I fell for game hype was my own fault, falling for the lies by Larry's best mate Peter Molyneux and the whole "Project: Milo" tech demo fiasco.
Even if it wasn't a buggy mess, the lack of checkpoints, iffy on-foot sections and the very anti-climatic ending would mean it still would have been a huge disappointment.
This is one of the most puzzling and frustrating things about the video games industry to me. Publishers and developers keep making the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.....
I always come back every few months to watch this video - it's made amazingly well. It's detailed, concise and revealing. I still can't believe a childhood game of mine was surrounded by so much scandal and laziness. I went back to play it recently, and you can really see that the game was buggy, underdeveloped and in need of more funding. I think that if Atari and Reflections released Driv3r post-GTA San Andreas, they would've have done somewhat better than a measly 760,000 copies. Truthfully, releasing Driv3r after GTA San Andreas was released in Halloween 2004 really would've been "a nail in the coffin" as you put it, because players would've been so distracted by the GTA's massive development and missions. This is a great video, I didn't feel like I was missing any information, good job Larry!
I remember being super excited for Driv3r specifically for the survival mode. LOL! When it finally released, I went to GameStop (or EB/whatever it was) to pick up the game, and the guy behind the counter actually convinced me _not_ to get Driv3r because of how bad it was. However, a week later I went back to the mall and actually bought it. And from then on, I had a lot of hilarious times with that game XDDD It's really quite entertaining because the physics are so unrealistic and ridiculous that it makes you burst out laughing. xD I think it's so bad that it's actually damn awesome.
This is a testament to quality and legs. Easily one of the top series on UA-cam. Quality, consistent, production value, polish. I'm reminded of video game shows/personalities of the golden years (AotS, X-Play, The Dead Pixel, Yahtzee)Great work, Larry!
Oh you, how did you know I liked your _'3 Major Gaming Scandals That Were Buried'_ video so much that I wanted to learn more about the Driv3r shitstorm?? I'm serious, I loved that video the first time I watched it, and I was just watching it again when this popped up on my subscriptions feed
I played The heck out of Driv3r. The glitches were indeed irritating but often hilarious too. I loved the police cars falling from the sky. But Driv3r was the game that got me into gaming.
People need to understand that journalists and public relations people use the same skillset a lot of the time. So when you see corrupt journalistic entities like this they are always acting as basically a PR firm instead of a journalistic enterprise.
I think the saddest part for me, is that the patched version of the game is actually kind of good, on PC anyway. They really should've taken the gamble to iron out all the technical issues or not have spent that loads of money in the first place. Who knows where the Driver franchise would've went differently after that.
I love Driv3r, it was one of my favorite games for ps2. Driv3r wasn't as buggy as this video shows either and the glitches that did happen honesty made the game more fun to play.
Driver: San Francisco it’s still my favorite in the series and highly underrated. Even the multiplayer was on point. That team then left and worked on The Crew.
Funny little tidbit about that, under Ubisoft, they've actually given the studio Reflections full rights to work on another Driver if they choose to I've heard. They just don't see the point at the moment and are perfectly happy under the hood of The Crew, Watch Dogs and Ghost Recon: Wildlands. And pretty much anything else Ubisoft has that involves driving now. So they're all still around and contributing which makes me and them very happy indeed.
It's real sad to see what happened to driv3r, it could be a real good game and an alternative to gta, if atari didn't rush the game it could be an hit seller
Driver will forever be my favorite game series by sheer nostalgia alone, but tbh I never experienced any of the big bugs shown here. The physics definitely had their (usually hilarious) moments, and the on-foot controls were very rough and wonky, but I still had a blast playing it. I think some of the wonkiness is what made it such fun, even ignoring the story mode altogether. Trying to put together super-Hollywood-tier home movies in film director was always entertaining too lol. Shame to see this whole train wreck, but at least the series got some level of closure with San Francisco being great fun in the same arcade way.
I am a big fan of this saga and i've never seen any of those bugs on driv3r. This is the best driving saga that i have seen, with a great story and i'd like an hd remaster from any of these games
It happens rarely and some of the bugs you need to do on your own, like rotating the camera afted you fall from the bike and land on a hill or jumping from a great height in the water to fall into the limbo
How did I not know any of this? I loved Driv3r!!! Now it may have something to do with I played it as a sandbox driving game, I especially loved driving around in the tractor trailers, and never played the story line or apparently paid attention to the cars driving through the walls...
Did you know that GTA used to roast Driver franchise? In GTA3, the mission called "Two-Faced Tanner" when Claude was tasked to kill the undercover cop who has girl walking animation. That was reference to the awkward walk animation in Driver 2. And that undercover cop named Tanner. And when they said "Useless out of his car" it means that Driver 2 started to lost it touch when they let us get out of a car.
@@Larry Oh !I firstly heard from another channel. But I never go in full details as much as your video. (Sorry for bad English) Salute to you sir! You still replied to the video from 5 years ago. You sir, are a legend.
@@อนิรุตน์กิจสวัสดิ์ Larry Jr. is a treasure for sure, but I think your original comment did a great job summarizing the important facts especially without seeing the episode in question. Just wanted to say I appreciate the effort and I don't find your English bad at all.
But in Driv3r Reflections roasted Rockstar by making a guy called Timmy Vermicelli which was a reference to Tommy Vercetti from GTA Vice City. He had oversized hands and floaties, bright orange skin and a Freddy Mercury kind of face. This roast is the better than the ones Rockstar did🤣
No, "Useless out of his car" didn´t meant to say that Driver started to lost it touch when they let us get out of a car, it was a parody of how in the second game you couldn´t use any type of gun, literally the opposite to GTA 3
meh bethesda games are buggy as fuck but nowhere near unplayable, especially if you play on PC. I only once came across a game breaking bug once in a bethesda IP and funny enough it was in new vegas, a game they didn't actually develop. :P
If you found an enraged journalist denying that there's no corruption in gaming journalism on twitter, giving him/her a link of this video might helps lol.
It probably won't. Concider the fact said journalist are either stupid or dishonest if they claim corruption is not present. It's like the people who believe things like conspiracies among politicians and wealthy corporations don't exist. A specific alleged one might not exist, but to claim that such things are bogus in and of themselves, is bogus in and of itself. And I doubt it would be helpful to present evidence to dihonest people. Yet in the extremely rare case of actually having a good-faith argument on the issue, you just might be right. lol
I loved Driv3r. The realism was way above GTA's, despite its problems. Of course it would have been a million times better had they properly finished it. But just look at the damage of the cars, it was mind blowing at its time.
not much different than modern gaming. they have good concept, decent release state. destroyed by bugs, unfinished mess. they rush it out to make money. but at the end of the day they lose in the long run
I agree. The visuals; the sounds of the cars; the physics... It was leaps and bounds ahead of where GTA was at the time with Vice City, and even San Andreas. And I say that as a life-long GTA fan.
The magazine who accepted that offer were just plain stupid. And I don't just mean stupid as "they had bad Etics" just stupid, strategically speaking. I mean, okay they take the deal, get to review the game before anyone else, and gave it a 9/10 regardless of its quality... When the game comes out, people are going to actually Play it. They will see that it Sucks. Even in the unlikely scenario where their corruption is not exposed, the reader will concludes that "theses journalists are morons, i'll buy the rival, from now on). The whole point of trying to get exclusive info is to get a edge on their rival. Completely destroying your credibility to win for one month makes no sense.
Every gamer in the world should be REQUIRED to watch this video, just so they understand how unbelievably low these companies will go. They don't give a FUCK about you or anyone else, or even the products they are pushing, it's ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.
I loved the first 2 drivers. If they did driver 3 right, the rivalry between them and GTA would've been good for the industry and to keep Rock* on their toes.
I was 12-13 when this came out and I don't remember it being that buggy or unfinished.Pretty insane to learn all of this so many years later good job Larry😊
I must have had a better copy of Driv3r when I was little because I never experienced any major glitches when I just screwed around in the Take a Ride mode
Driv3r may have been a commercial failure, but the fact that it's so buggy is what inspired me to get into reverse engineering and eventually become a software engineer myself. I learned a LOT from Driv3r. I managed to fix smaller bugs present on the PC version. I was pretty close to getting new models imported into the game (technically I could, but I couldn't settle on a model format), but I haven't had any motivation to continue. In a way, I've let down many people by promising to get shit done, but here we are _4 years_ after starting and I never did "finish" anything. It's a Driv3rgate within a Driv3rgate, so would that make it Driv3r3rgate?! Lol
Oh, I don't know, Larry. They're really into historical revisionism these days so I'm sure they'll invent some link between Driv3r's scandal and harassment if they weren't mostly non-gamers.
Driv3r holds a very interesting place in my heart. I remember really being hyped for this game when it came out..........and being really disappointed with the "finished" game. But that soundtrack man. Without a doubt oone of the best Video game soundtracks of all time, and I will firmly stand on that hill. In fact, the 1st soundtrack that I remember buying on it's own. I wish I still had the CD.
I loved this game. But I was also like 9 when it came out, and had been coming from the previous driver games, so Driv3r blew my mind. A few years later I finally got GTA IV and never looked back. Kind of sad now that I was playing Driv3r instead of San Andreas, but i’ll not forget all of the fun I had with the driver series.
Not sure which Driver it was; but, people kept running away from me and the police would shoot me on sight. Me and my brother finally figured it out when we looked at the shadows, his gun was drawn but you couldn’t see it on the character model.😂😂😂😭
Played hours and hours of Driver (PC), Driver 2 (PS1) and Driver3 and Parallel Lines. 3 was fun, challenging and was easy to waste hours just causing havoc. Finding hidden vehicles including the forklift was a hoot. The game was not nearly as glitchy as this story makes it out to be. The game is an honest 8.5/10 to me.
You heard of course that the game was patched later right, maybe you played the patched thing? I mean why would the company go through all this scandal bs that obviously happened, if the game could be considered at least 'fun enough'?
It's amazing that despite 3 different incarnations of Atari they still do the same bullshit, which is rush half-baked half-finished steam piles of garbage. The same shit that sank them in the gaming crash of 83. Sunk them in the early 2000s, and is currently sinking them again.
Lazy management is the reason why a company sinks. It's like they saw gta 3 in the works and said "just make driver 3, they'll probably buy it, or get the the two confused or something. Oh and hurry up. No reason, just hurry up." I'm pretty sure that was the idea behind driver 3.
A year late but I learned a lot. I bought this game new PS2. I loved it, but I was a kid in middle school. I did see glitches but rarely. I prefer Driver over GTA only because driver focused on the driving. Great video!
My brother had it on PS2. Don't remember those issues. The thing I always remember is the easteregg where they took a jab at GTA Vice City and hade a whole F1-track hidden off map.
Amusing, isn't it? If they just waited until the next October and released it then, they would've done well. Instead, they threw it on the shelves unfinished and Driver, Atari and Reflections became the laughing stock of the gaming world.
It’s funny, if this happened this day and age this wouldn’t be a scandal at all really. This is now so common place it’s hilarious in hindsight
The more technology evolves, the lazier and shiftier people get. There was no day 1 patching in those days, so if you released a broken game, you had no excuse and faced the wrath of the people.
And this is why modern gaming is crap.
Cyberpunk 2077 says "hello"
Ah man. One day too late. I was gunna say. Cyberpunk has entered the chat
@@lucasmaggart388 Looking at the Driv3r footage I went 'wow this is literally the cyberpunk of PS2'
I was a kid when the first three drivers came out, so I was too stupid to care how broken Driv-three-arrrgh was. Me and my school friends had such a laugh finding glitches... so I guess that counts for something. Even though Atari are absolute wankers for ruining this franchise, at least we got Stuntman out of this, although badly timed.
Lol, we did the same thing too, worth the asking price just for that!
I love the way you pronounced the title😁
It’s scary that they almost did the impossible, remove something from the internet permanently.
What's scarier is we'll never know who else has actually succeeded in that task and in what topic.
Cyber damnatio memoriae
"A delayed game is eventually good, an unfinished game is bad forever." -Shigeru Miyamoto
(Cough) Duke Nukem Forever (Cough)
@@Larry True but at least Duke Nukem Forever is a much better game than Driv3r. Sure Duke Nukem Forever is not the best not it not terrible either. Lazy Game Reviews (LGR) thinks the game not that bad. Here is video review on the game: ua-cam.com/video/q_EESRrn-Ck/v-deo.html
I remember Gabe Newell had a version of that Miyamoto quote that went:
“If a game is late then it’s late. But if a game sucks, then it sucks forever.”
John V Except he once said that about Wario Ware Twisted in Europe.
A delayed game will bankrupt the company if it takes too long
My eyes practically bugged right out of my head when you said that Driver was eventually re-branded as Watch_Dogs... dear God, it all comes full circle.
Lol, my eyes rolled back so far, I could see my brain :D
Ok, so the Watchdogs thing totally blindsided me. I had no idea.
For all the people commenting "It wasn't that bad", "I liked Driv3r". You probably played the patched version of the game.
Mada Faka I played both versions, I love the game. Not because of nostalgia, just because I had genuine good fun. Your right. But Driver will be my favorite series EVER.
If not the game, then the soundtrack, the well rendered cutscenes which were almost Hollywood-esque, Jericho was a bad ass villian omggg 😂
If you play the game 100% to how they want you to play missions, you should miss a lot of glitches too, but do anything "creative" and you're in a whole world of trouble.
Or they were kids when they play it. Even I looked past obvious flaws in games when I was a kid.
Patched PS2 version on release day? No. I didn't have any issues with bugs. Perhaps regional versions for some odd reasons had issues but none of my friends in Norway had these bugs in the EU version at least.
DRIV3R was so broken, me and my cousin were convinced that we got a scratched copy. The missions would always bug out and the player would get stuck on the sidewalk.
Erick Dominguez i was convinced of the same.
What was funny was how San Andreas took a shot at Driv3r. "REFRACTIONS, HOW'D YOU SCREW IT UP SO BAD!"
They did?
One of the thugs is playing a video game in the mission Mad Dogg's Rhymes, he's rather displeased by it, commenting "How could Refractions mess up so bad?" and "Tanner, you suck ass!".
gta.wikia.com/wiki/Madd_Dogg's_Rhymes
"One of the guards playing a video game remarks, "How could Refractions mess up so bad?" and "Tanner, you suck ass!" These are references to the poor reception of DRIV3R, which is considered a GTA Clone, where the protagonist's name is Tanner, and the game is made by Reflections Interactive."
that is just pure gold
***** In the mission where you're breaking into Madd Dogg's mansion, a guy is playing Driv3r (or a copyright friendly imitation of it) and he is hating the experience.
Yeah, as the others said, damn they were fast.
If you search for a video of the mission mad Dog's Rhymes, you'll see it almost certainly, it's a brief cutscene, even, not just ambient dialogue.
I find the potshots amusing considering Reflections and DMA/Rockstar North used to be buddies back in their early days.
Also, Reflections themselves took a shot at Driv3r as well, as there was an area in Parallel Lines that had a dumpster filled with copies of Driv3r.
The whole 'deleting bad comments' sounds awfully familiar after the whole UA-cam Rewind 2018...
Watch_Dogs was originally a Driver Game !?
Imagine that. The game with the worst driving controls originally being a driving game.
I think it had more to do with the gameplay style as to why the driving wasn't good in Watch_Dogs. Like Mario Kart is a fun game but imagine Mario Kart driving physics in Grand Theft Auto
Jeez that explains why watch_dogs was poopy
All I remember is this game was absolutely amazing when I played it when I was little. Like a whole personal modern day world to explore
That's funny, I bought Driv3r for ps2, pretty close to it's launch, and didn't encounter any of these bugs. I only remember the story missions being incredibly hard difficulty-wise, and having fun in istanbul, driving in oncoming lane with the infinite car mass cheat. This video actually makes me want to check it out again :D
Ironic how DRIV3R turned out the way it did to compete with San Andreas, and then we get GTA Definitive Edition.
History repeats itself.
@@silverflight01 you think that GTA Definitive edtion was bad? Battlefield 2042 would like to have a word.
@@silverflight01 Given how notoriously often this happens nowadays, I think someone needs to tell history we heard them the first time
What I loved most about Driver and Driver 2 was how the pedestrians would always leap out of the way. It made it feel like a movie.
The one thing i remember most about all of this was that Rockstar and Reflections were sniping at each other in their games, too. Starting in GTA3 where Kenji sends you kill a "strangely animated" man who looked exactly like Tanner in Driver 2, making fun of his walk animations. Driv3r responded by hiding a bad knockoff of Tommy Vercetti (named "Timmy Vermicelli", get it?) around the game, and he had little orange floaties on his arms to reference that you couldn't swim in Vice City. Then San Andreas finished it with the mission where you sneak into Madd Dogg's mansion, and he's sitting on his couch playing Driv3r and raging about how terrible it is.
I remember playing GTA 3 and doing the kenji mission and thinking "oh shit, it's Tanner from driver! Does anyone else know about this?" My question was finally answered.😎
Atari over-investing and screwing themselves through stupidity? Is this 1982 again? They never bloody learn, do they?
It's 2016 and they still haven't learned.
Atari today is not the same Atari back in the 80's. They're really Infogrames, a French company that bought the name in 2003 so that they could ride the old company's coat tails.
The House Always Wins We all know this. It's irrelevant.
Maybe they're just adamant about destroying the video game industry.
It's a different Atari than 1986. Sure it has the same name, but it has nothing to do with the original except for the name being purchased.
Moral: Don't be greedy and rush what could had been a good game
Let's all laugh at an industry, that never learns anything, tee-hee-hee.
A Driver fan named RacingFreak found the early press demo of Driver 3 in an Xbox Development Kit very recently and its better looking than the final version.
-More cars were planned. Many of the cars in the final version had different designs and handling. The car select movies are different to what we got.
-There were better looking textures for the environments, cars, pedestrians and police.
-The cutscenes, missions, characters and cities were VERY different looking.
(Note: This is only a summary and the game files are still being explored. More content may appear.)
Look for channels VortexStory, BetaDepot, Olanov and RacingFreak. RacingFreak is the guy who found it so I suggest you look at his channel then VortexStory for comparison as he talks about it also. Olanov found some music and BetaDepot put up some analysis videos of the preview build.
VortexStory has a playlist called "Driv3r Beta and Press Demo Content." This is what to search. All their findings are documented on the playlist.
It's crazy to see these clips, I absolutely do not remember this game being buggy, but then again, it's probably the nostalgia glasses
Someone needs to bring this back up. Nothing on the internet should ever die, and companies should have no right to touch archive sites or wikis. This is humanity's grand archive, the sum of human knowledge, and no one (legally or otherwise) should be allowed to mess with it.
PongoXBongo yes, The Internet archive is remarkably useless as soon as you start to research anything that is either obscure or controversial. A lot of content there is blocked by the owners of the domain. Some of the more obscure content is simply not archived before disappearing forever.
Off topic: Is anyone else tired of scrolling through the comments on a phone when suddenly a wild advertisement appears and resets the comments to the top, forcing you to scroll back down?
Zac Hawkins no u
That UA-cam life...☹️
Sadly, the Driv3rGATE was a forecast of what the AAA game industry became today; publishers didn't learned with the 1982 "E.T" game, neither with "Driv3rgate", so everyone can be dang sure that they won't learn with Cyberpunk 2077.
The market is way over saturated. I feel like we're heading for another video game crash
I may as well throw in the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition that released full of bugs, oh and Battlefield 2042 that game was more broken than Rockstars GTA Trilogy The Definitive Edition, and boy that collection tells quite a story going all the way back to when Take 2 started taking down GTA SA, III, and Vice City mods. THEN removing the original versions, and the icing on the shit cake is that to this very day Rockstar STILL scams people.
You know, the mention of Watchdogs starting out as a Driver title made me wonder if there could be a Fact Hunt to be made out of new IPs that started as sequels in other franchises. Off the top of my head, I know Devil May Cry got its start from one of the earliest builds of a potential RE4 (it's more complicated than that, and obviously they didn't just slap a different title over a game originally meant to be RE, but the idea for it and some of the mechanics and settings came from an early build of RE4).
EB Agent J i know this is an obvious one but Sleeping Dogs started as a new entry in the infamous True Crime series, True Crime: Hong Kong
When I played watch dogs and especially watch dogs 2 it still to this day loosely reminds me of Driver San Francisco.. then to find out it's basically running on the same but modified engine.
What's ironic is nowadays kids are USED to this kinda stuff LOL and they still buy the shit, banking on patches and updates, etc.
It sucks...
At least with live updates there is real chance it will actually get fixed.
Back in this era you didn't really get live updates or after release patches.
ALso if a game is THIS unfinished then people still drag it through the mud like Cyberpunk 2077.
We only give stuff a pass if it's mostly good and just needs a bit more polish.
"For the good of us all, releasing a game of this importance in such a woefully unfinished state should never be allowed to happen again"
And as they say, the years start coming.
I bought a PS2 copy back in the day and I can assure you that I have never seen the glitches in this video. Sure there may have been some small bugs or clip throughs here and there but the ones shown here are ridiculous. No wonder it got such a backlash.
I'm gonna be honest, I owned the PS2 version and never had a single glitch like what I saw in this video. Game played really well for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Imagine being one of the guys who designed the 35,000 unique buildings...
...only for the game to not only flop, but drop to the bottom of the barrel.
I've played this game on PS2 and I loved it! But I was very young at that time and therefore didn't know all those bugs weren't supposed to be there. I didn't know about that whole scandal as well. I'm glad for the memories I could make with that game, but am kinda sad now knowing how much better that game could've been.
I remember being in my late teens, early 20s when this game came out, looking at it and thinking "this is going straight to the bargain bin." Boy was I right. Bullet dodged.
As a kid i loved driv3r. Hell I'd spend hours messing with the glitches alone. I'd love to see how it could've turned out with more polish
Driv3r was the Fallout 76 of the Early 2000's
Yeah both games got fixed into a playable state
@@lookatme5939 Doesn't mean that they weren't unplayable before hand
@@lookatme5939
Not sure playable is the right word in regard to 76. "It just works" is a bit more accurate.
Update: ... Oh wait I am putting fun and playable into the same category. Said the same as you. Just with a quote. So nevermind
"Driva Free"...
Well played.
Driver became Watchdogs ? Wow ! I'm being educated as well as entertained. I love this channel.
Thanks bud, I try to find original and interesting topics! :)
The irony that Atari rushing unfinished games out led to the Video Game Crash in the 1980s (With E.T and Pac Man) and cost them millions. Yet, even after that they didn't learn their damn lesson.They did it again a few years ago with Roller Coaster Tycoon World.
I swear, AAA game companies have the memories of Goldfish.
True, but it's worth noting that the Atari of the PS2 era has nothing to do with the original Atari l, it's French company Infogrames rebranding itself.
I actually really enjoyed this game back in the day, I had San Andreas, but I found Driv3r more cinematic and gritty, and I played the first two drivers religiously, so I had a soft spot for it there too. It definitely could have been a better game had Atari not been a bunch of dummies
By the time driver 3 came out, I had already written it off as the poor man's gta 3.
Driver 3 will always hold a special place in my heart. Still play it to this day
What really pissed me off about the whole scandal was being chewed out by customers as if I was personally responsible. I was managing a GAME store at the time and the company was pushing us to build up hype about the game and to point out the positive reviews.
So after telling people how great Driver 3 was going to be, I had to eat crow when the game was launched and people started returning it; including myself, only keeping the collector's edition car figurine.
The only other time I fell for game hype was my own fault, falling for the lies by Larry's best mate Peter Molyneux and the whole "Project: Milo" tech demo fiasco.
Wild how this was such a crazy occurrence back then but now it probably happens every other month
Even if it wasn't a buggy mess, the lack of checkpoints, iffy on-foot sections and the very anti-climatic ending would mean it still would have been a huge disappointment.
Such a shame to have your reputation and franchise destroyed by an idiotic company who profits off of their success from 40 years ago.
Welcome to EA! Are you anti-consumer? Anti-fun? Anti-happiness? This is the job for you
+Antiform that sounds like Vivendi Universal lel
@@Antiformedat least they make decent games and still give me interest
Here we are years later & neither the gaming industry or "games media" learned anything from this.
The never learn anything, Teeheehee
This is one of the most puzzling and frustrating things about the video games industry to me. Publishers and developers keep making the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.....
@@batou1976 Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Seems that's true no matter what it is.
@@Dragonking1984 And from that we could extrapolate that if we do not heed our history, then it wont only repeat, it _must_ repeat.
@@freshrot420 Sadly it seems so. It's like history is the teacher & we're all that one dumb ass who's had to repeat the same grade over & over.
I guess if this happened today Atari would have blamed Toxic gamers...
I enjoyed Driv3r very much but I was young and did not know about GTA. Had very fun times with this game. Has a special place in my heart.
For some reason I always binge guru larry when I get sick
aw, thank you :)
I do the same thing!!!
Him and ashens.
Great light hearted entertainment.
I put larry on when I sleep
@@orangeman3220 same
I’m home sick today watching this lol.
I always come back every few months to watch this video - it's made amazingly well. It's detailed, concise and revealing. I still can't believe a childhood game of mine was surrounded by so much scandal and laziness. I went back to play it recently, and you can really see that the game was buggy, underdeveloped and in need of more funding. I think that if Atari and Reflections released Driv3r post-GTA San Andreas, they would've have done somewhat better than a measly 760,000 copies. Truthfully, releasing Driv3r after GTA San Andreas was released in Halloween 2004 really would've been "a nail in the coffin" as you put it, because players would've been so distracted by the GTA's massive development and missions. This is a great video, I didn't feel like I was missing any information, good job Larry!
a) had NO idea Driver became Watch Dogs, but
b) Thanks Stuart
What a crazy, well narrated series of events, Larry!
I bet if Driv3r were to be fixed up and released as intended, it'd be awesome!
Indeed, was hoping Ubisoft would re-release it on Steam or uPlay
I remember being super excited for Driv3r specifically for the survival mode. LOL!
When it finally released, I went to GameStop (or EB/whatever it was) to pick up the game, and the guy behind the counter actually convinced me _not_ to get Driv3r because of how bad it was. However, a week later I went back to the mall and actually bought it. And from then on, I had a lot of hilarious times with that game XDDD
It's really quite entertaining because the physics are so unrealistic and ridiculous that it makes you burst out laughing. xD I think it's so bad that it's actually damn awesome.
survival is crazy, the cops will hit you so hard it will make your car do ballet
So is this why Driver San Francisco can only be bought with subway gift cards?
This is a testament to quality and legs. Easily one of the top series on UA-cam. Quality, consistent, production value, polish. I'm reminded of video game shows/personalities of the golden years (AotS, X-Play, The Dead Pixel, Yahtzee)Great work, Larry!
Oh you, how did you know I liked your _'3 Major Gaming Scandals That Were Buried'_ video so much that I wanted to learn more about the Driv3r shitstorm?? I'm serious, I loved that video the first time I watched it, and I was just watching it again when this popped up on my subscriptions feed
Same, the final entry of the video is the most interesting segment of a top list I've ever seen.
Thanks dude, yeah I thought it was a rather interesting topic to go back to, especially as I cut a load out for time constraints originally.
Just brought your book “Fact Hunt”. I didn’t need an early copy to give it 10/10
I played The heck out of Driv3r. The glitches were indeed irritating but often hilarious too. I loved the police cars falling from the sky. But Driv3r was the game that got me into gaming.
If you're not pronouncing it Drivthreer, you're doing it wrong.
People need to understand that journalists and public relations people use the same skillset a lot of the time. So when you see corrupt journalistic entities like this they are always acting as basically a PR firm instead of a journalistic enterprise.
I think the saddest part for me, is that the patched version of the game is actually kind of good, on PC anyway. They really should've taken the gamble to iron out all the technical issues or not have spent that loads of money in the first place. Who knows where the Driver franchise would've went differently after that.
I love Driv3r, it was one of my favorite games for ps2. Driv3r wasn't as buggy as this video shows either and the glitches that did happen honesty made the game more fun to play.
Imagine if Driver 3 had been finished and polished... We probably would't have had to listen to Irish's oirish arkcent in Red Dead Redemption
Driver: San Francisco it’s still my favorite in the series and highly underrated. Even the multiplayer was on point. That team then left and worked on The Crew.
Funny little tidbit about that, under Ubisoft, they've actually given the studio Reflections full rights to work on another Driver if they choose to I've heard. They just don't see the point at the moment and are perfectly happy under the hood of The Crew, Watch Dogs and Ghost Recon: Wildlands. And pretty much anything else Ubisoft has that involves driving now. So they're all still around and contributing which makes me and them very happy indeed.
Driver: San Francisco is a fantastic game! The soundtrack is one of the best in any game IMHO too!
Now this is a game the Angry Video Game Nerd should review. Nice find Larry.
He unfortunately would throw his tv out the window before or after having a stroke.
It's real sad to see what happened to driv3r, it could be a real good game and an alternative to gta, if atari didn't rush the game it could be an hit seller
Driver will forever be my favorite game series by sheer nostalgia alone, but tbh I never experienced any of the big bugs shown here. The physics definitely had their (usually hilarious) moments, and the on-foot controls were very rough and wonky, but I still had a blast playing it. I think some of the wonkiness is what made it such fun, even ignoring the story mode altogether. Trying to put together super-Hollywood-tier home movies in film director was always entertaining too lol. Shame to see this whole train wreck, but at least the series got some level of closure with San Francisco being great fun in the same arcade way.
Hybridizer The game got patched a little bit after launch. The game was pretty good after that happened
It's sad that Future and the PSM2 and XBW editors suffered no real comeuppance for this. They definitely deserved to.
It wasn't really known about until some time later, so they may have left by then.
I am a big fan of this saga and i've never seen any of those bugs on driv3r. This is the best driving saga that i have seen, with a great story and i'd like an hd remaster from any of these games
The native "guerrilla" is here.
It happens rarely and some of the bugs you need to do on your own, like rotating the camera afted you fall from the bike and land on a hill or jumping from a great height in the water to fall into the limbo
How did I not know any of this? I loved Driv3r!!!
Now it may have something to do with I played it as a sandbox driving game, I especially loved driving around in the tractor trailers, and never played the story line or apparently paid attention to the cars driving through the walls...
You must try it again someday, you can pick it up for pennies now. See if your opinion has changed!
eaveskc same, this game was my childhood since i wasnt allowed to play gta yet, gonna probably play it again soon haha
I had it for the Xbox it's very buggy it's great
Did you know that GTA used to roast Driver franchise?
In GTA3, the mission called "Two-Faced Tanner" when Claude was tasked to kill the undercover cop who has girl walking animation. That was reference to the awkward walk animation in Driver 2. And that undercover cop named Tanner.
And when they said "Useless out of his car" it means that Driver 2 started to lost it touch when they let us get out of a car.
you havent seen my recent "characters made to piss people off" episode i take it? :)
@@Larry Oh !I firstly heard from another channel. But I never go in full details as much as your video.
(Sorry for bad English)
Salute to you sir! You still replied to the video from 5 years ago. You sir, are a legend.
@@อนิรุตน์กิจสวัสดิ์ Larry Jr. is a treasure for sure, but I think your original comment did a great job summarizing the important facts especially without seeing the episode in question. Just wanted to say I appreciate the effort and I don't find your English bad at all.
But in Driv3r Reflections roasted Rockstar by making a guy called Timmy Vermicelli which was a reference to Tommy Vercetti from GTA Vice City.
He had oversized hands and floaties, bright orange skin and a Freddy Mercury kind of face. This roast is the better than the ones Rockstar did🤣
No, "Useless out of his car" didn´t meant to say that Driver started to lost it touch when they let us get out of a car, it was a parody of how in the second game you couldn´t use any type of gun, literally the opposite to GTA 3
"The game was terrible, glitched to hell, bordering on unplayable, rushed to retail."
Drivergate predated Bethesda
*Assassin's Creed Unity
meh bethesda games are buggy as fuck but nowhere near unplayable, especially if you play on PC. I only once came across a game breaking bug once in a bethesda IP and funny enough it was in new vegas, a game they didn't actually develop. :P
@@NoStereo You must have never played fallout 3. Nothing worse than getting stuck in a wall, and having to load a save from 45 mins ago.
Well there was Driver76
So they renamed a series to escape the disappointed fans but the new name still turns into a huge let down. The soul of Driv3r is haunted.
If you found an enraged journalist denying that there's no corruption in gaming journalism on twitter, giving him/her a link of this video might helps lol.
It probably won't. Concider the fact said journalist are either stupid or dishonest if they claim corruption is not present. It's like the people who believe things like conspiracies among politicians and wealthy corporations don't exist. A specific alleged one might not exist, but to claim that such things are bogus in and of themselves, is bogus in and of itself.
And I doubt it would be helpful to present evidence to dihonest people.
Yet in the extremely rare case of actually having a good-faith argument on the issue, you just might be right. lol
And gaming media is still in the toilet, thankfully people like Larry keep it real.
I loved Driv3r. The realism was way above GTA's, despite its problems. Of course it would have been a million times better had they properly finished it.
But just look at the damage of the cars, it was mind blowing at its time.
not much different than modern gaming.
they have good concept, decent release state.
destroyed by bugs, unfinished mess.
they rush it out to make money. but at the end of the day they lose in the long run
I agree. The visuals; the sounds of the cars; the physics... It was leaps and bounds ahead of where GTA was at the time with Vice City, and even San Andreas. And I say that as a life-long GTA fan.
Its a shame that Driver became Watch Dogs, San Francisco was actually a decent game and I really would have liked a sequel
The magazine who accepted that offer were just plain stupid.
And I don't just mean stupid as "they had bad Etics" just stupid, strategically speaking.
I mean, okay they take the deal, get to review the game before anyone else, and gave it a 9/10 regardless of its quality... When the game comes out, people are going to actually Play it. They will see that it Sucks. Even in the unlikely scenario where their corruption is not exposed, the reader will concludes that "theses journalists are morons, i'll buy the rival, from now on).
The whole point of trying to get exclusive info is to get a edge on their rival. Completely destroying your credibility to win for one month makes no sense.
Every gamer in the world should be REQUIRED to watch this video, just so they understand how unbelievably low these companies will go. They don't give a FUCK about you or anyone else, or even the products they are pushing, it's ALL ABOUT THE MONEY.
I loved the first 2 drivers. If they did driver 3 right, the rivalry between them and GTA would've been good for the industry and to keep Rock* on their toes.
At least we got the Saints Row franchise making it's debut about 2 years later!
The shit that's happening today makes this scandal feel quaint.
Only at that point in time it was nonsense, whereas now it's a common occurence.
This was an awesome video. Entertaining and informative. Thanks Larry, subscribed.
Ah, thanks bud, muchly appreaciated :)
I was 12-13 when this came out and I don't remember it being that buggy or unfinished.Pretty insane to learn all of this so many years later good job Larry😊
FUN FACT: The Driver franchise is STILL around. Although a hollow shell, it's recent iteration was different, ditching cars for boats instead.
But Driver SAN Fransico
@@zafool4997 it ruled.
Or watch dogs.
@@ccateni28 The Crew also.
@matt Yeah, but Watch Dogs and The Crew were meant to be Driver games. But yes when they make a car game the DNA will always be there.
I must have had a better copy of Driv3r when I was little because I never experienced any major glitches when I just screwed around in the Take a Ride mode
Same and I played story mode
@@SofaK1ingN1c3 Same thing happened to me, not one single glitch, at least from my memory.
Driv3r may have been a commercial failure, but the fact that it's so buggy is what inspired me to get into reverse engineering and eventually become a software engineer myself. I learned a LOT from Driv3r. I managed to fix smaller bugs present on the PC version. I was pretty close to getting new models imported into the game (technically I could, but I couldn't settle on a model format), but I haven't had any motivation to continue. In a way, I've let down many people by promising to get shit done, but here we are _4 years_ after starting and I never did "finish" anything.
It's a Driv3rgate within a Driv3rgate, so would that make it Driv3r3rgate?! Lol
That would make it Driv3rgategate.
well,i think now its time to get shit done xD
So pretty much what happened with GamerGate then. Corruption and unethical journalism exposed and then the censorship of all who questioned it.
But no SJWs back then to twist it about harassment.
Larry Bundy Jr well said
Oh, I don't know, Larry. They're really into historical revisionism these days so I'm sure they'll invent some link between Driv3r's scandal and harassment if they weren't mostly non-gamers.
I remember everyone thought GTA3 was a Driver 2 ripoff.
I remember when everyone thought driver 2 was "the fake gta where you can't really get out of the vehicle."
Driv3r holds a very interesting place in my heart. I remember really being hyped for this game when it came out..........and being really disappointed with the "finished" game. But that soundtrack man. Without a doubt oone of the best Video game soundtracks of all time, and I will firmly stand on that hill. In fact, the 1st soundtrack that I remember buying on it's own. I wish I still had the CD.
Couldn't agree more!
You could download the MP3s and burn them to CD-R :D
I loved this game. But I was also like 9 when it came out, and had been coming from the previous driver games, so Driv3r blew my mind. A few years later I finally got GTA IV and never looked back. Kind of sad now that I was playing Driv3r instead of San Andreas, but i’ll not forget all of the fun I had with the driver series.
Not sure which Driver it was; but, people kept running away from me and the police would shoot me on sight. Me and my brother finally figured it out when we looked at the shadows, his gun was drawn but you couldn’t see it on the character model.😂😂😂😭
It’s funny because scenarios like this happen all the time nowadays. Developers overpromise, and underdeliver.
Publishers promise, developers deliver.
Ironically, the GTA Definitive edition remaster did the same thing as Driv3r.
@@NFSBeast2365 Nah, that thing didn't promise that much but was still way worse than expected.
@@NFSBeast2365 more like GTA the broken edition.
Too bad no one cares anymore about the Driver ip, Driver San Francisco is a great game.
Ive watched this like 4 times already and jump to watch it again, everytime it's recommended.
Played hours and hours of Driver (PC), Driver 2 (PS1) and Driver3 and Parallel Lines. 3 was fun, challenging and was easy to waste hours just causing havoc. Finding hidden vehicles including the forklift was a hoot. The game was not nearly as glitchy as this story makes it out to be. The game is an honest 8.5/10 to me.
You heard of course that the game was patched later right, maybe you played the patched thing? I mean why would the company go through all this scandal bs that obviously happened, if the game could be considered at least 'fun enough'?
Didn´t see any of those glitches after countless hours of gameplay.
Alone in the dark: Illumination so you're not in the dark and it's multiplayer so you aren't alone.....
It's amazing that despite 3 different incarnations of Atari they still do the same bullshit, which is rush half-baked half-finished steam piles of garbage. The same shit that sank them in the gaming crash of 83. Sunk them in the early 2000s, and is currently sinking them again.
Lazy management is the reason why a company sinks. It's like they saw gta 3 in the works and said "just make driver 3, they'll probably buy it, or get the the two confused or something. Oh and hurry up. No reason, just hurry up." I'm pretty sure that was the idea behind driver 3.
A year late but I learned a lot. I bought this game new PS2. I loved it, but I was a kid in middle school. I did see glitches but rarely. I prefer Driver over GTA only because driver focused on the driving. Great video!
Jesus Behind the Wheel I played and completed Driver 3 not long after release and I agree, very rarely came across bug or glitches.
Many elements of what happened sounded alot like Cyberpunk's situation.
I got an advert for cyberpunk whilst watching this video, I died laughing.
Come on Larry, just make the Molyneux episode already.
Actually, scratch, Molyneux deserves multiple episodes.
A Month of Molyneux
check out Kim justice he has loads of things like that
I don't think it could ever compare to Kim Justice's ongoing series on the man
+Doom2Guy And I don't say that to badmouth Larry. It's just that it would be a redundant video to make
My brother had it on PS2. Don't remember those issues.
The thing I always remember is the easteregg where they took a jab at GTA Vice City and hade a whole F1-track hidden off map.
I know about the Timmys, but where is this F1 track?
@@joshglover2370 Maybe not a F! track but some racing track passed the tunnel where the Timmys are.
It was a Go Kart Track.
Thank you Larry and basedgod Stuart Campbell for this video. Nobody should ever forget what happened and thankfully they can't touch this video
Should've waited that six months. They shouldn't have lied and threw the game on the shelves. This is just...sad.
Amusing, isn't it? If they just waited until the next October and released it then, they would've done well.
Instead, they threw it on the shelves unfinished and Driver, Atari and Reflections became the laughing stock of the gaming world.