Open city games that offer plenty of roads to travel like Test Drive Unlimited (Entire island of Oahu, HI), and Midnight Club LA (Smaller version of LA) will be the main competition to the new Driver if Driver decides to focus on driving more than walking around.

GTA4 is a game about the character, so it can allow sleeping, eating and surfing computers. The driving segments in GTA are usually underdeveloped and cartoony, with unrealistic driving. Hopefully GTA4 changes it, but by the look of the GTA narrow roads so far, not sure it's gonna happen.

Driver's strength is the driving, so it will continue to fall behind GTA4 unless they come up with another approach to on foot, so it keeps focused on driving more than the character.