Driven to Destruction PS2 Review Wichita KS

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We've seen quite a few crash and bash games on the consoles of late. From the fantastic Burnout 3 through to the more realistic Flatout, it seems bash and crash games are back in fashion. Driven to Destruction is Atari's attempt at getting in on this market and they are no stranger to the style, having shipped a number of Test Drive games in the past. Driven to Destruction is meant to be give you the life of a country road racer but fails to impress in a number of aspects despite its budget pricing.

The whole aim of the game is to work yourself up from a nobody to the most revered road racer in the country. To do this the game offers a number of modes to choose from, although this can really be filtered down to two main selections; career or action mode. There is no real storyline behind the game in that you're building the storyline as you go on. Whilst racing games mostly don't have a storyline, it really is a missing component from this because there isn't much to keep you going as you read about later in the review.

Driven to Destruction reminds us quite a bit of a game called Dirt Track Racing more than Flatout. Races either take part on open road or on setup dirt tracks and basically there are no rules. Bash and crash your way to the front and win money to further your career. The action mode is for those who just don't want to put up with upgrading and trading cars, driving around the place going into events and just plain doing frivolous non-racing things. The racing is fairly typical dirt circuit racing although some of the tracks do have some changes which really make the racing more challenging than perhaps it should be. There are times where the game takes control out of your hands in terms of whether you crash into other cars or not via jumps and crossover tracks.

The career mode is a bit like Grand Theft Auto 3, minus the getting out of the car and running around part. You start off in a country town having just been given an old car by your relatives. From there you have to drive to various sections of the town to take part in races, upgrade or trade in the car, meet up for a race sequence or just drive around. The thing that makes this almost pointless is that driving around doesn't do anything. Occasionally you will find someone to race but other than that it would have been better to just have a menu to select where you want to go. It doesn't help that the graphics are very bare and unimpressive either.