We hammered Driver Parallel Lines for over five hours before we came to a mission that forced us to get out of the car. The Driver series has finally returned to doing what it does best - driving.

Parallel Lines kicks the shoddy ways of Driv3r to the kerb, abandoning Tanner's rubbish walking tendencies and story that made no sense. An undercover cop who kills other cops by the dozen? You won't find any of that here. New, no-nonsense Driver takes things down a simpler, less stupid route. Your character is referred to simply as The Kid. You're new on the streets and, predictably, want to build up your reputation in the criminal underworld. Word gets about that you're a dab hand with a motor, and so the mayhem begins. 1970s New York is where it all kicks off, but Parallel Lines won't keep you locked in the past.

We won't spoil the plot for you, but events take a huge twist halfway through the game, and you suddenly find yourself in a transformed, modern-day New York City (the twist isn't time travel, in case you're wondering). The transformation is fantastic - the streets look more up-to-date, the pedestrians stop dressing like lentil-eating hippies, and the floaty 1970s-style coupés and boat-sized sedans are replaced with chunky SUVs and trim sports cars. Both the past and present forms of the city look great. From the moment you turn on Parallel Lines the game oozes visual quality. The cut-scenes are super-slick, as you'd expect from the series. The buildings are far more detailed and the pop-up has been massively reduced from the previous game. You may notice the odd building appear now and then, but when you're burning along at 120mph it's hardly surprising. It runs silky smooth the whole time, despite there being more cars on the roads than you'd care to count, and streets being so full of pedestrians that a even a split-second mounting of the kerb will get you a multi-kill to be proud of.

The driving physics are much better than before, too - some of the best we've seen. Cars have a realistic sense of weight and tyre-screeching handbrake turns feel fantastic. You can almost feel the metal crunching in collisions, and the dead driver in the other car helps support the illusion.

The damage on your car is amazing - every part of it dents realistically, windows smash and bits fall off into the road. It's not just your car that does this, but the environment as well.

Those classic Driverstyle alleyways are packed with even more destructible junk than ever. There's nothing more satisfying that roaring through a long trash-filled alley with boxes, bins, fences and God knows what else battering off your car, then blasting out the other end onto a main road, leaving behind a mass of litter scattered everywhere. And you'll never be short for alleys to wreck, because the New York in Parallel Lines is absolutely enormous.

Whereas Driv3r contained three fairly large but separate cities, Parallel Lines combines the equivalent of all three cities in one enormous New York environment. The city is sprawled over three islands - New Jersey, Manhattan and Queens - with bridges connecting each. Can we hear someone coughing "Grand Theft Auto!" behind their hand? Sure, it's similar, but unlike GTA, Parallel Lines blends the three islands together seamlessly, without any apparent loading delays. It also gives you complete freedom to roam the entire map from the very beginning, with missions spread over all three islands. The sense of freedom is cool although the major downfall of such a large environment is that the missions are so far apart that driving to them can take forever. This puts a fair delay on your progression through the story and disrupts the flow of action, although it isn't a disaster by any means - you might enjoy simply driving through the streets. Complete freedom of the islands rules out the need for a separate Take a Ride mode - now you can 'take your ride' between missions.

The usual Driving Games mode has also been blended into the main single-player campaign, with places on the map where you can go to enter street races, small chase missions and all manner of non-story-driven madness.

So instead of having three separate modes of gameplay like in previous games, Parallel Lines throws everything into one massive cauldron of driving goodness. It's clear Reflections wanted this game to have the biggest and best single-player mode it could. And with the focus on actual driving this time, it's succeeded.

It's great to see Driver dump those crap on-foot-only missions and return to its pure driving roots. You've got your usual high-speed chases and pick-up and drop-off missions. But Parallel Lines always goes that extra mile to make the experience surprising, varied and more of a thrill.

So you'll get an already crazy mission, like chasing a copter through the city on a motorbike, that spices things up further by making you use ramps to jump over rivers and up onto rooftops to keep up. Another example is when you're asked to steal a collection of valuable cars. Only enhanced security prevents you from leaping into the cars and pinching them like normal, so you have to get a tow truck and drag them away while their gangster owners chase you, leaning out of their windows and shooting at you. The towed car snakes treacherously left and right as you throw it round corners, realistically tugging the rear end of your truck all over the road. You have to fight with the steering to keep it going in a straight line. It's utter madness and very challenging but great fun.

Missions rarely fall below this frantic pace, but on the occasions that you do have to get out of your car you'll find a massively improved on-foot control system. The twitchy dual-analogue controls of Driv3r are gone. Now, full movement is on the left stick, with aiming handled by a lock-on target system, pretty much like every third-person should play. However, just like in the Grand Theft Auto titles, the targeting isn't flawless - sometimes it'll target a civilian or a car, instead of the cop who's pointing a shotgun at your chest.

It is far better than before; now that they can swerve through thick traffic almost as well as you. Get out of your car and they'll do the same, chasing you while firing big guns in your direction. Jumping out of your car was a good way to lose the cops in Driv3r - this time around, it's not such a smart idea. Not only because they put up a better fight, but also because of a new, more realistic felony system.

Now there are two felony bars: one for you and one for your car. Let's say a cop sees you speeding and gives chase. The felony bar for your car rises but not for your person, because he hasn't seen your face yet. So now your car is what's known on the street as 'dirty". And if you lose the cop and ditch the car - the only thing that links you to the crime - your personal felony bar remains empty.

But if you jump out of the car when the chasing cop can still see you, the car's felony level moves to your personal bar, and he will then recognise you as the criminal to chase. Cool, huh?

It gets better. If you have felony on your personal bar but you hijack a 'clean' car (without the police seeing, obviously), you can drive right past a patrol car and they'll never know. It's a really clever idea, and one that it puts Grand Theft Auto's comparatively shallow, unrealistic 'wanted stars' system to shame.

It adds more depth to the game, too. In previous Driver games, or any urban crime game for that matter, if you cause enough havoc to achieve maximum felony level, you're screwed. This brilliant system gives you the opportunity to use skill and cunning to escape the long arm of the law. And the fact that the cops' ability to 'see' plays such a significant role in how the system operates massively increases the illusion that you're running from real cops with realistic human abilities, not magic police who know your whereabouts and what car you're driving no matter what.

But with all this realism it's refreshing to see that Driver Parallel Lines doesn't take itself too seriously. There are no shooting-range training missions or any dull crap like that. It's just pure fun. It gives you a huge city, a bunch of cool cars, some guns and dozens of great missions - not to mention two different decades to mess about in - and lets you off the leash to go crazy. It's unfortunate that there's no sign of the multiplayer modes that were being touted during development - there's potential for some really cool multiplayer chase modes here. And the long journeys you're forced to take to reach mission points can be tiresome and tend to fragment the action.

Nevertheless, Parallel Lines is a genuine and triumphant return to form for the Driver series, and even shows the mighty Grand Theft Auto franchise a few cool new tricks along the way.

1. Throws out the walking boots and gets you back behind the wheel where you're supposed to be in Driver games.
2. The new felony system is the best we've seen in any urban crime game to date. And yes, that includes Grand Theft Auto.
3. Cars look and handle fantastically, with some of the best real-time damage we've ever seen.
4. Brilliantly varied and inventive missions have you causing utter chaos in the virtual New York City.

1. Spread out mission markers take ages to get to. It would have been nice if they were more tightly arranged.

Pure, undiluted driving fun, just the way it's supposed to be. Fed up with Driv3r? This is the cure. Absolutely unmissable.