Here's a cut-down review from Official Nintendo Magazine Uk:
Forgiving might be easy but forgetting… well, we're not so big on that. Suffice to say, we doubt we'll be getting over Ubisoft's rather lacklustre treatment of the Wii so far any time soon. With only a couple of decent titles buried under a pile of cash-grabbing awfulness, it's hardly been a stellar start for the French publisher. And not surprisingly, a port of a year-old game like Driver: Parallel Lines doesn't really make things much better…
Still, there's some relatively good news to come out of all this - despite being an incredibly straightforward and limited port, Parallel Lines is okay. it's far from an essential purchase but equally, it's nowhere near as bad as, say, Far Cry.
Live Fast, Drive Dumb
Parallel Lines is mainly about the driving; a good thing, seeing as any time spent on-foot is pretty rubbish. As such, you'll spend much of your time speeding around the fairly believable streets of New York, completing all kinds of car-based missions that mostly involve driving through glowing markers.
Split over two time periods - the '70s and 2006 - it certainly has lots of flavour, not to mention lots of vehicles to purloin along the way. Those of you looking for GTA-style action are likely to be disappointed though, as there are decidedly less things to do on the side which leaves the action feeling more linear than perhaps it should be.
While the missions aren't exactly inspired, the impressive size of the map, combined with some interesting AI touches (the police respond if they spot you breaking the speed limit, for instance) makes for an enjoyable experience.
Out Of Control
The Wii controls, however, seem to prove somewhat hit and miss. It doesn't take a genius to realise that aiming a gun with the on-screen cursor makes car chases that much more exciting and, of course, accurate, but putting the handbrake on Nunchuk movement doesn't really work as it's just too sensitive.
But then, Parallel Lines was never going to be about making use of the Wii's controls - it's another quick cash-in port that just happens to work because the game's actually not bad. That doesn't excuse it looking like a PS2 game, having some atrocious visual pop-up or a ragged frame rate though, so we hope Ubisoft stops doing these lazy ports soon. After all, the gaming public has just as long a memory as we do…
ONM Verdict
Parallel Lines certainly marks the best 'new old' game Ubisoft has put out for Wii recently, but that's not saying much. It's alright, but not good enough for us to forgive yet another port…
70%
