DRIV3R or Driver 3, is a racing adventure video game. It is is the second sequel in the popular Driver series and was developed and published by Atari. DRIV3R was released in North America for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox on June 21, 2004 to mixed reviews. In Europe, it was officially released on June 25, although due to the way Atari shipped the title across the continent, it made its way into independent UK retailers before the release date, even making a #6 position in the ELSPA chart for that week. On March 15, 2005, it was released on PC for US customers, and on November 1, and a scaled down version was released for the mobile phone during June of 2004. A version of DRIV3R is annouced for the Nokia N-Gage; however, there have been no press releases of screenshots or info yet.
At one point it was planned to be released for the Nintendo GameCube, but was dropped due to poor sales at the time of creating the game.
The game begins in Miami, Flordia and ends in Istanbul, Turkey. The player, who is a disguised / undercover FBI agent, first travels to Nice, France, chasing an automobile smuggling ring.
After the release of DRIV3R, there was a notable stir in the gaming community due to DRIV3R mocking GTA: Vice City. In DRIV3R, tan men with floaties and Hawaiian shirts were hidden throughout the game. They were called Timmy Vermicellis after the main character of Vice City, Tommy Vercetti. They wore floaties because players in the GTA series were not allowed to swim, whereas in DRIV3R, players could. A lot of GTA fans were angered by this, even though it was in fact Rockstar Games that had started the rivalry with a mission in GTA3 called "Two Faced Tanner" in which you had to kill an undercover cop who was "useless out of his car" (they even went so far as to give the psuedo Tanner a female's walking animation). Rockstar fought back in GTA: San Andreas. In San Andreas, while breaking into Madd Dogg's mansion, you see a man playing a video game and making fun of the way the main character walks (Tanner's walking animations were often critisized) and asking how they could have made something this bad.
Driver 3 brings back features from Driver 2 and adds the ability to ride motorcycles and boats, use weapons, swim, and go inside buildings among other things.
