It seems the game has been released a week early in the UK, and the knives are well and truly out.
http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_posts.php?thread_id=14404&forum_id=1
http://www.eurogamer.net/forum_thread_posts.php?thread_id=14404&forum_id=1
The bottomline:
DRIV3R is a very disjointed mess of a game. There are some highs (most not concerning gameplay) and a lot of lows. While I can sympathise with Reflections for opting to include on-foot missions initially, the part should clearly have been scrapped in development once they had realised their complete and utter inability to deliver on that front. Atari really has no excuse for releasing this game in the state it is in. It is far from finished at this stage ( as suggested by the variation in the quality from one mission to the next).
While the driving missions are fun, from the hours i've put into the game so far, I can't tell you to expect any new ground to be explored here. It shouldn't have mattered so much had there not been so much hype surrounding this game. Atari made a lot of promises, none of which they could have had any possible reason to believe they could deliver on (had they seen the game running).So while it is reasonable to assume that the pre-release hype will still carry the game some distance, should it be a complete bust, it would only serve Atari right.
High production values and some above average driving sections accompanied by very very sub parr on foot missions, obvious lack of polish in the gameplay department and no coherence at all, leave a lot to be desired. In the end it doesn't matter how big a fan of the series anyone is (even the GTA enthusiasts dying to get their hands on it) or how willing they are to put up with the bad parts to get to the good parts, DRIV3R simply cannot be recommended to anyone because it is not a finished product (far from it). Anyone considering buying it must first give it a good long look once it comes out.