Some folks don't remember that before the GTA craze, there were other driving games. Free-roaming they mostly weren't, and there wasn't much to do on foot. Back before the new millennium, we liked our driving games heavy on driving. That amounted to watching a car on a street with other cars on the street. Real cities with real landmarks were a staple. Sure, the cities looked mostly the same, but so did the cars. Oh, and it was 1999 so we were doing all this on PlayStation.

Driver '76 might sound like a step back in time, but it is actually a nice step forward in a franchise that has stuck very close to its mission all these years. The retro aspect of the game comes across in many ways, in some very cool cut scenes that look like old comics and the overall feel of things. Take a dose of GTA, bring it way back to before the 80's and you have Driver '76. This game looks almost nothing like GTA but will draw comparisons, especially from naysayers. The graphics aren't as polished and most of the visual presentation is a notch down from GTA. The driving action is superior in the sense that there are more special scenes you can trigger and more missions revolving around the use of vehicles that can be customized to almost any taste. This aspect of Driver '76 makes it more like a street racing game than a mission-based crime simulator like GTA. The music is excellent and it almost brought tears to my eyes when David Bowie's Suffragette City started playing on the radio. Bowie's Ziggy Stardust record was one of the first cassettes I ever owned, probably not in 1976, but maybe about two years later. The only downer is not hearing songs run longer as you move through short missions, but you get a chance to really enjoy all the music as you play through the game.

This is a game on rails for the most part. You'll pick it up and play straight through in a few long sessions. Short missions and a good storyline help make this a fun, light jaunt through seventies New York. You play a wheelman building reputation in the Big Apple and you'll get mixed up with plenty of bad elements that can pay good money as you move through the game. Nothing beats playing through the main mode, but you won't come back a second time once you've beaten the main game. As a sidebar or way to keep you engaged, Driver '76 offers several multiplayer modes that you can use to race your friends for pink slips. Since there really is a focus on customization in the game, it's pretty devastating to lose a vehicle... but that's how the cookie crumbles, my friend. If you just are feeling amicable, you can enter a trading mode called Swap Meet that allows you to mix and match parts and pieces with other PSP friends.

Building a solid game from the ground up on PSP is a nice achievement. The general rule to follow is that if you're expecting a GTA killer, you're going to be disappointed. At the same time, if you like street racing games, but want some GTA on-foot action, or just get bored racing around the city ten times so you can buy a new decal for your Honda Civic, this might be a right fit for you. The vehicles being all retro is a nice touch, but the cops will go retro on your head with their nightsticks if you do any foul deeds.

Driver '76 includes a different take on the star system that GTA used. Raising attention from the cops in your vehicle shows up differently than breaking the law on foot. Both will get you thrown in the pokey, so you have to watch yourself at all times. On-foot missions start to crop up early in the game and there is good variety that goes beyond just "Shoot this guy, then pick up this guy, then hide the car." Those type of missions are here, of course, but more as training fodder than the meat of the game. Beyond the special game modes for multiplayer, you can collect items and pull missions with high style to earn more points and cash.

Finding special items (is the fact that you collect stars a nod to GTA? Probably not...) makes up a big chunk of the game, but these are not those tiny floating packages from GTA. You'll be able to see the special star pick-ups from a mile away. Finding the easy ones doesn't take much more than a watchful eye during missions, but the dedicated, core gamer will want to buckle down and find them all. There is a nice ramp of missions that get progressively more difficult and introduce more nuances like aggressive cops, rival drivers, on-foot missions, weapons, and a host of other features. Pulling missions off in time with minimal damage to your vehicle can be challenging. The default difficulty level is not easy, so another caution goes out to people expecting a GTA-lite game. The racing action is at least as challenging as GTA if not more so for being more realistic. The diversity of on-foot missions isn't nearly as great in Driver '76, but all the missions are well-paced and plenty challenging.

It's a shame there is no true online mode, because Driver '76 would be a blast for online multiplayer. Battling wirelessly with friends is a nice feature and lets you see all the neat tweaking done to the cars available in the game. More challenge modes involving cops, mini-games or even some throwback material from earlier Driver games would have made for a nice addition. We'll have to wait for Driver Perfect Collection or some such item to get that wish granted. The controls are going to be familiar to almost any racing fan and don't include any surprises. Navigating in the game is handled through a mini-map system and there isn't any chance of getting lost or turned around while driving. Many shortcuts are available and you'll learn them all in order to master the timed levels. The mini-map is fine, but finding objects in the game world isn't as clear as in other games where a plume of smoke or big, bright, bobbing arrow is waiting for you at your goal.

It makes me blush to compare Driver '76 to GTA with such frequency, but it's now impossible to sort out all the mission-based driving games. Driver '76 continues a nice tradition of placing a solid racing game in the larger context of an engaging story from the criminal underground. The adaptation to PSP is very solid and although it doesn't show any sign of unseating heavier games, it does set a nice bar for the next Driver installation. I'm hoping for Driver 2076 so we can get the perfect blend of GTA, Wip3out, and Dead to Rights. Sounds like a cool game, don't it?