The game received mixed reviews, with praise mainly going to its 1970s soundtrack, cinematic presentation, and city atmosphere and transition, but with certain elements of its driving, shooting and graphics criticised.

Driver: Parallel Lines takes place in an entirely open world environment, in which mini-games are now accessed from the in-game world instead of from a menu, while the game also features some new elements that are common with Grand Theft Auto – visible blood when someone is shot, an "Auto-aim" feature (with manual aim also available), a money system, fully modifiable vehicles (with a test track to test out upgraded vehicles), and environment destruction (i.e., lamp posts can now be run over and fire hydrants can break, spewing water into the air).

For the Wii version, the felony bar is replaced with a "stars" system, similar to that of Grand Theft Auto, which light up when the player attracts police attention.

Like Grand Theft Auto, the game features fictional, yet distinct styles of vehicles based upon real automobiles that were in use within New York between the two periods.

The game's HUD, which is updated from that of Driv3r featuring a speedometer, a nitrous oxide meter, and an odometer displaying how many miles the player has driven in-game also changes in appearance, from a chrome style to an LED look.

[3] They can all be customized at the Ray's Autos garage, including performance, speed, ride height, paintjobs, bodyworks, nitrous, bulletproof glass and more.

Slink becomes impressed with TK's skills and eventually introduces him to two close associates – Bishop (Rodney Saulsberry) and "The Mexican" (Nolan North).

The men assign TK to help assist them in the breakout of Candy (Michael Cornacchia), a criminal mastermind, from Rikers Island.

After Candy's escape, the group introduce TK to their boss Corrigan (Ian Gregory), a corrupt undercover detective, who reveals that he intends to take over the cocaine business from the city's Colombian cartel.

Candy devises a plan to capture a prominent Colombian drug lord, Rafael Martinez, and ransom him back to the cartel.

After killing Ray, Corrigan flees when Maria arrives to stop him; TK realizes that she is Martinez's daughter and that she had been working for Candy to track down her father's true killer.

[4] Video game media reported that Reflections had "listened" to fans following the "failure" of Driver 3, by making numerous changes and spending more time driving during missions rather than on foot.

[12][13] The PlayStation 2 version was released in Japan by publisher AQ Interactive's distribution subsidiary Extreme Line on 12 October 2006.

The special edition, costing slightly more, includes an extra DVD containing information about the production of Parallel Lines as well as in-game videos and character profiles.

[21] "Suffragette City" by Bowie is the opening theme in the CGI intro, while Blondie's "One Way or Another" (from their 1978 album Parallel Lines) plays during the initial in-game action.

[45][47][44][46] Praise went towards the story, fixes and improvements over the previous title, but criticism went to the implementation of some elements in the new formula and the unbalanced difficulty.

[30] Eurogamer gave the PS2 version 6 out of 10, while stating that "there's not too much shame in trying to do what GTA does, of course (and at least it's not about bloody gang warfare for once), but while this is definitely a solid improvement on its dreadful predecessor, it needed to achieve a basic level of competence and build upon it, and it only does that to a very limited extent".