The game is played out in four cities: Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, each of which remain only partially faithful to the actual city layouts. The game was notable at the time of its original release insofar as the player was able to explore each city as an open world environment. The game was designed to mimic 1960s and 1970s car chase films. The title and the general tone seem to be heavily inspired by the 1978 crime film The Driver, written and directed by Walter Hill, which itself was based on the 1967 French film Le Samouraï, written and directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. One of the most notable allusions to the film is the "Training" level at the beginning of the game, which is very similar to a scene in the film in which the driver (played by Ryan O'Neal) must prove his skills to his potential employers in a parking garage. The music, character design, and the cars themselves, are inspired by films such as 1968's Bullitt and television series such as Starsky and Hutch. The game features a "Film Director" mode, where a run can be replayed with cameras chosen by the player, and a "Quick Replay", where the cameras are automatically selected. Once the player has unlocked a given city in the main story, they have the option to drive around that city in open world mode. When a city is unlocked, several other modes also become available for play being Pursuit, Getaway and Checkpoint.