The mythology of Las Vegas is certainly heady. In our imagination, it's all about high-rollers, Sinatra's Rat Pack, glitzy showgirls and car boot loads of drugs (cheers for that last one, Hunter S. Thompson...) Even if in the real world Vegas now has a whiff of corporate theme-park mixed with faded glamour, those traditional associations linger on.
Sadly, 'faded' and 'corporate' are the words that spring to mind when playing Driver: Vegas, rather than, say, 'glamour'. It feels like a cash-in, a 'Will this do?' take on a console brand that's a gamble in all the wrong ways.
It's an entirely new game, mind: Driver: Vegas doesn't exist on console. You play grizzled anti-hero Tanner, who's been tasked with zooming around Vegas chasing gangsters (doubtless because they're planning some kind of ambitious casino-heist with Julia Roberts, or something).
What this means is a top-down game that includes racing segments where you streak through the streets of Vegas, and also on-foot bits where you wander around casinos shooting baddies.
The game uses a mission-based structure, so you'll drive for a bit, then jump out for a bit of walky-shooty action, then get back in the car. And so on.
Let's start with the driving sections. They alternate between being too easy, and nigh-on impossible. Glu reckons the game offers innovative 'drifting' controls, making it easier to screech round corners. We reckon it's just fiddly – this is supposed to be thrilling, not frustrating.
It's not helped by the jerk-o-vision, which is a big let-down here in Europe, compared to the super-smooth BREW version we played in the US. Something's definitely gone wrong in the translation.
Worse still are the on-foot sections, which are genuinely tedious. You walk for ages, shoot someone, walk for ages again, and shoot someone else. Compared to pure action-adventure games on mobile, it feels dull and unimaginative.
And that's the core problem with Driver:Vegas. It promises an exciting Grand Theft Auto style blend of racing and fighting, but actually it fails to deliver on either count. There are many better driving games on your phone, and loads of more fun adventures.
The graphics aren't attractive enough to redeem it, and the restrictions of mobile phones mean there's none of the atmosphere that you'd get from a GTA-style game on console. What you're left with, sadly, is less Frank Sinatra, and more Frank Spencer.
Driver: Vegas
Mediocre action-racer that's simply not fun to play
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)