Multilevel Parking Driver

Genre: Driving / Racing Game

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Traffic Master Collection bundle, along with Driving World: Italian Job and City Traffic Driver.)

Multilevel Parking Driver, released on Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a game that has players driving various cars in a Simulation-style game that tasks you with getting through a series of checkpoints and then parking in a designated spot as fast as you can without colliding with too many obstacles (or sometimes simply getting to a finish line).

(Note: This game shares a lot in common with the trio of games that were in Speedster’s Collection, including this game having many of the same assets. As such, I have copied my review for those games here, changing it based on what is different this time)

The presentation here is decent but unspectacular, with sufficient 3D visuals that get the job done, but are in no way impressive. There’s plenty of nasty pop-in and repeated slowdown too, and just overall this game is not very visually-appealing.

As for the gameplay, Multilevel Parking Driver, released on Nintendo Switch in 2021, is a game that has players driving various cars in a Simulation-style game that tasks you with getting through a series of checkpoints and then parking in a designated spot as fast as you can without colliding with too many obstacles (or sometimes simply getting to a finish line). is an odd halfway point between a Driving Simulation and a Racing game. There aren’t any other racers here – your only real enemy is the ticking clock and a damage meter that depletes with each collision. There are other cars on the roads in this game, but they act as obstacles rather than opponents.

The game’s missions all take place in and around a city parking garage, with a small nearby race track. In a typical level of the game, you’ll be going through one of various routes through this area, guided in how you’re expecting to navigate by the presence of translucent green gates.

You’ll generally find you’ll have more success in this game’s levels taking things slow and careful not to bump into anything. It will be rare when you’ll find it useful to drive at top speed. As a result, I’d argue that this game definitely leans in favor of the Driving Simulation side of things, so Racing Game fans will likely be disappointed here.

Unfortunately, this game’s controls are just terrible. Your vehicles’ turning radius is restrictive, the brakes take far too long to kick in, and just overall everything here is far too stiff and clunky to be enjoyable.

Like most other games to use this template, this game can also get repetitive, but Multilevel Parking Driver takes things to a whole new level of bad here. As with other games in this series, you simply follow the gates through a different path in the same area, then park or sometimes cross a finish line. Wash, rinse, repeat. However, in Multilevel Parking Driver, completing the different timed goals in each area need to be done in separate runs. In other words, in order to fully complete each area, you need to play through it multiple times, even if your first playthrough was fast enough to qualify for the better time goals. If you thought this game template was repetitive, just wait until it forces you to replay levels multiple times for no good reason.

Another frustrating element here is that the traffic in these levels isn’t scripted, meaning that you could end up getting a worse time in a level simply because the traffic was different in this run than it was in the last one.

Finally, this game’s $14 standard price is a joke, because this doesn’t even feel like a full game. It’s far too repetitive and simple, there’s no multiplayer, and I just cannot see most players enjoying this game for more than a few minutes before putting it down forever. Of course, we all know that $14 price tag is just a placeholder to make the game seem like a really good deal when it frequently goes on sale, but the bottom-of-the-barrel $2 price tag really seems like it should have been this game’s normal price, especially since this developer is re-using assets across multiple games.

In the end, in all of these copy-pasted reviews playing through what often feels like the same game with a different map or a few minor details changed, Multilevel Parking Driver is by far the worst of the lot I’ve played so far. It’s bad enough that the gameplay is bad and the graphics are awful, but this game takes the series’ already repetitive nature and needlessly makes it even more repetitive. Even if you like playing all these games with “Driving” or “Driver” in the title, this is one to skip.

tl;dr – Multilevel Parking Driver is a game that mixes elements of Driving Simulation and Racing games, with a focus mainly on the Driving Simulation side of things. Unfortunately, the cars here do not handle well, and it is far too lacking in options and contents for its price. Even worse, this game forces things to be even more repetitive than the already-repetitive formula by forcing players to replay the same levels multiple times for completion. Even among a pretty bad series of games, this is particularly terrible.

Grade: D-

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