Driver 2 Advance (2002). Play online

Summary

Driver 2 Advance delivers a surprisingly tight driving experience on the Game Boy Advance. The game squeezes the original’s story into just two international hotspots—Chicago’s neon‑lit streets and Rio de Janeiro’s winding avenues—each rendered in a top‑down, polygon‑styled world that feels crisp on the handheld’s screen. I’m constantly ducking between missions, hopping out of one car to steal another, while the police chase me with familiar voice clips, even hearing Portuguese taunts on the Rio levels. The GBA version adds a four‑player link mode, letting friends race together, and replaces the licensed radio tracks with catchy instrumental tunes. Critics even named it GameSpot’s best game of October 2002 and crowned it the best driving title on the GBA, a testament to how well it translates high‑octane action to a portable format.

Storyline

Driver 2 Advance throws you into Chicago’s underworld where Pink Lenny meets a tattooed Brazilian at a bar, only for two gunmen to burst in and open fire. Lenny escapes, the Brazilian is killed and later examined by officers John Tanner and Tobias Jones, whose tattoos link him to Alvaro Vasquez, leader of a Brazilian crime syndicate.

Tanner and Jones go undercover to probe Lenny’s role in recent gang violence. A witness reveals Lenny once laundered money for Solomon Caine, a mob boss with Chicago and Las Vegas operations, and that he has now struck a deal with Vasquez, Caine’s chief rival. The duo tails a Vasquez henchman to a warehouse and finds hardware shipped from Cuba.

Caine learns Lenny and Vasquez are in Rio. In Rio, Jones sees Vasquez allow Caine entry despite tight security. Tanner aids Caine in disrupting Vasquez’s network while Jones infiltrates the gang, but his cover is short.

When Vasquez discovers Jones’s true identity, Lenny attempts to flee by helicopter. After rescuing Jones, Tanner, with Jericho, shoots down the chopper, arrests Lenny after the crash, and returns him to Chicago, where it’s revealed Caine and Vasquez had once been allies and now reconcile in Rio.