Driver: Suffering Remembered

If you played the original Driver back in 1998, you probably remember the tutorial level, which required you to do a series of driving maneuvers in a parking garage. You probably also have memories of broken controllers, uncontrolled sobbing and chemical sedation. There’s no doubt that the rest of Driver was a classic, but it definitely didn’t start off that way.

The fact that Ubisoft recently released a trailer for Driver: San Francisco that riffs on that punishing tutorial strikes me as strange. On the one hand, it was definitely a gaming touchstone and it strikes a nostalgic chord. On the other hand, no matter how fond my memories may be, like high school, Requiem for a Dream and James Joyce’s Ulysses, I have no desire to ever experience it again.