Unscrewing Atari's Mistakes: Driver 76 from Ubisoft

French publisher Ubisoft announces the coming of Driver 76 coming on PSP in March. Developed by Sumo Digital Ltd. and Ubisoft's Reflections Studio, the title will bring back memories of Hollywood-style car chases, with additional on-foot-segments, multiplayer mode and a genuine 70's soundtrack. Also, modifications to the car can be made now, so you can suit it to gameplay preferences.

Ubisoft also says the game will be packed full with missions especially designed for "gaming on the move", 27 in all and divided into 6 main plots. The player can take separate "jobs" to earn cash used to improve the car's performance. Also, mini-games ranging from street races to all out carnage in the Destruction Derby mode are present.

In case anyone remembers, Driver 3 was announced to be a breath taker even before its release and game magazines were "influenced" to grade the game's performances pretty high. When it finally appeared, it was shockingly worse than expected and an enormous scandal was born.

Trying to correct their errors, Atari publishers threw in Driver Parallel Lines, which got less criticized but didn't get too much credit either. The fourth game in the series, Driver: Parallel Lines, was released March 14, 2006. Reflections intended Parallel Lines to "return the series to its roots" by focusing more on driving but the game was really different from its predecessors. Aside the on-foot-segments, the game is strongly focused on the driving, returning to the roots of 70's classic-car-chases.

As of 2004, Ubisoft is the third-largest independent video game publisher in Europe, and the seventh largest in the US. Now that the French publisher has the handles, Driver 76 is surely going to get a lot of attention if Ubisoft wants to live up to its rep.

Driver 76 is the first all-new edition of the famed Driver series to be released since Ubisoft acquired the franchise in 2006.