The Driver series has traveled a long and sometimes bumpy road. The first couple of games were quite good and pushed the PlayStation to its technical limits; the third game, Driv3r, was a big disappointment, and 2006's Driver: Parallel Lines was a step up from the previous game but still showed a lot of room for improvement. Ubisoft must have felt as if it could bring out Driver's untapped potential, because in 2006 it purchased the license from Atari for $24 million. Less than a year later, Driver 76, the first Driver game from Ubisoft, is headed to the PlayStation Portable. We were able to spend some hands-on time with the game just ahead of its May 8 release.

　　Driving recklessly will earn you unwanted attention from the police and ruin your ride, but it sure is fun.

　　Driver 76 takes place in New York City in, you guessed it, 1976. This is two years before the events of Driver: Parallel Lines, making Driver 76 a prequel of sorts. The game opens with a short cutscene in which you're introduced to the main character, Frank, a wheelman with a love for cars and a need for speed. It seems that Frank can't say no to a street race, a problem that quickly gets the attention of the cops, and a chase ensues. After squeezing through a roadblock, the cutscene ends and you're thrust behind the wheel and given the task of losing the cops. After a few quick turns and a little detour down a narrow alley, the cops are history and it's off to one of your hangouts, Elmo's bar. It's here that you get to watch the game's "real" opening, which is stylishly presented like a narrated comic book. It turns out that you've got your eye on a dame, but there's one problem--she's already got a man. Actually, there's more than one problem--he's rich, and he's the head of a gang known as the Triads. Your buddy Ray concocts a scheme to get you the girl, and for better or worse, you set off to put the plan in motion.

　　If you played Driver: Parallel Lines, you've already got a basic idea of what to expect from Driver 76. You're given a mission, when you complete it a bit more of the story is told, and then you're given another mission. There are 27 missions in all. In our time with the game we experienced several types of missions in our quest to get close to the Triad boss: We picked up a car with a top-of-the-line eight-track player in it, only to find that the cops were waiting for us to steal it; we got a job picking up cigars to deliver and then promptly drove off with the goods; and then we hijacked three seafood trucks. There are missions that require you to hop out of the car and hoof it, but other than getting out of our car to steal the seafood trucks we didn't get a chance to run around much. If you don't feel like doing a mission you can drive around the city for fun and look for any of the 125 stars hidden throughout town. These stars give you collectibles that can be displayed in your pad. You can also take side jobs, such as picking up and dropping off people, and even participate in street races. Since most everything you do is likely to be illegal, the police are a constant threat. A small meter in the bottom left of the screen shows you your heat level, while the radar in the bottom-right corner shows police presence. If you're spotted you'll need to hit the gas and lose the fuzz as quickly as possible, by any means necessary. A shortcut through Central Park? A tire-burning 180 in the middle of Times Square? One hundred miles per hour down a trash-filled alley? Heck, why not do all three?

　　Once you've finished a mission you're awarded cash and, sometimes, vehicles (there are 57 in all) and other items. You can use your cash to purchase weapons and upgrade the cars in your garage. We had only enough money to buy new shocks and springs for our muscle car, but other available upgrades included new paint jobs, engines, nitrous, and other performance-related items. The game's vehicles aren't licensed, but there's a wide variety of car types, each with its own unique handling--we even saw a couple of motorcycles around town.

　　The game's version of New York City includes Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens, Manhattan, and Harlem. You can even head off to New Jersey for a change of scenery. Each locale looks different from the next, and there's plenty of variety to the buildings in each location. The game's visuals looked solid and, more important, the frame rate was pretty smooth. There was a fair amount of street traffic and a number of pedestrians decked out in '70s clothing, many of whom were unfortunate enough to become acquainted with our bumper. It's not that we hit them because the cars handled poorly--they handled just fine--it's just that, well, Frank's a shady dude and we were trying to get into character. Also helping us get into character and the time period was the game's soundtrack, which includes songs such as "Low Rider" by WAR, "One Way or Another" from Blondie, and "Trouble Man" by Marvin Gaye.

　　Sometimes you'll have to get out of the car to handle business.

　　We weren't able to try it out, but Driver 76 will have an ad hoc multiplayer component. There are four different modes to choose from: Carnage is a destruction-derby-type game, point to point is a checkpoint race that covers crazy routes, street race is another checkpoint-based mode but sticks to the main streets, and circuit race is a race around one of the game's tracks. An interesting twist you'll be able to put on all of these game types is putting your car's pink slip on the line. As long as you've got the car in your garage you can risk it in a race. But be careful, because if you lose, the car goes to your opponent and the only way to get it back is to win it back.

　　Driver 76 is due in stores on May 8, and from what we've seen so far it seems poised to deliver to the PSP an experience similar to that of the console games.