The Driver series is kind of a funny thing. I couldn’t tell you exactly what the point of the franchise is exactly. I mean, it’s not a “Driving Game” in the traditional sense of the word like Forza or Gran Turismo. On the other hand, I wouldn’t necessarily group it together with Need For Speed either. For me it has always suffered from the problem that the driving isn’t good enough to compete with driving games, and there isn’t much else going on. Realistically, the driving in the Driver series often isn’t much better than that of a standard open world game like GTA, Saints Row, or Sleeping Dogs, and those games have much more going on than driving.

But hey, you know what? Let’s give the series another try. I haven’t played a Driver game since the one with Michael Madsen in it. I just checked, and that game was Driv3r, and it came out in 2004, so it’s been a while. That game was poor to say the least. Even the relatively big name voice acting (Madsen, Ving Rhames) was pretty sub-par. I’ve heard good things about Driver: SF though and, more importantly, I heard it has some pretty unique elements, so let’s give this a shot!

Story-wise Driver: SF settles comfortably right into that sweet spot where it is pretty dumb, but just dumb enough to be kind of charming and not too dumb as to become really annoying. I’m getting a real Starsky and Hutch vibe from this game right off the bat. You and your partner are typical buddy cops who for some reason get to drive around in a kickass yellow Dodge Challenger and don’t have to wear uniforms. You’re an amazing driver and things just happen to work out that all problems in the city can be solved with a bit of badassery behind the wheel. Convenient!

Things get a bit trippy from here, and this plays nicely into the gameplay. You are chasing the big bad guy as he makes a break from prison and your car is T-Boned. You are injured badly and wind up in the hospital in a coma, but wake up from that vision back in your car. From that point on the game is a big series of “Is this real? Or am I dreaming this because I’m actually in a coma?” Well guess what? If you thought for a second you were in a coma but it turns out you’re actually in your car without a scratch AND you now have super powers, you’re probably in a coma. That’s just what it looks like from where I’m standing anyway.

Yep, John Tanner (you) now have the ability to straight up possess anyone in the entire city of San Francisco. This power seems to have some unbelievably weird limitations. For instance, it seems like Tanner can’t (or won’t) possess anyone that isn’t currently behind the wheel of a car. This is the primary gameplay mechanic. At any point, you can “Shift” out of your body and into the body of anyone driving any car in the city. It’s actually a pretty neat idea and really fun in practice. Unfortunately Tanner uses this power almost exclusively to force innocent motorists into devastating head-on collisions so he can win races and help reality shows film the ensuing crashes and stuff. You know, real police work!

It’s cool to have your pick of the litter in terms of vehicles around the city, and it’s fun to experiment with the different ways to approach each mission. Unfortunately, this sort of subverts the entire system built into the game where you can buy garages and fill them with cars you’ve purchased. I bought a couple cars at the start of the game, but then I realized I can have any car in the city at any time, so why would I buy any cars? The short answer is, I wouldn’t.

Another big problem I have with this game is the mission length and driving AI. Some of the missions are just way too long to not have some sort of checkpoints in place. This is brutal when combined with the fact that there is some pretty egregious rubber-banding going on with the races. Rubber banding (or CPU Assist) is that frustrating thing games do often in racing and sports games. If you’re winning, the AI will all of a sudden become insanely good and catch right up to you. The worst offender I’ve ever seen is NBA Jam (I’m still mad about that almost 20 years later) but Driver is pretty guilty of this as well. It just cheapens the experience. Win or lose, I want the AI to perform at a consistent level.

With rubber banding like this there was really no point in getting out to an early lead in races, because the AI was going to catch up and pass you. This all came to an unbelievably frustrating head with a particular race. In this race you drove an insanely fast car that spun out at the slightest misstep, and the race was at least 5 minutes long. I frequently got out in front and spent the whole race holding my breath trying not to screw up only to be passed on the final straightaway and have to start the whole race over again, probably about 25 times.

There were a couple more very difficult missions that were juuuuuust long enough that it was really annoying to have to start over every time you failed, which is a shame, because for the most part this game was really fun. I still can’t believe they managed it, but this driving game really has some unique mechanics and a really killer story concept. As Tanner starts to figure out what’s happening to him, he experiences a Fight Club-esque revelation that he has more control over this world than he initially thought, which is executed really well.

At the end of the day, Driver: San Francisco is a driving game. Actually, it’s a driving game that doesn’t even do driving much better than games in which driving is just a minor part. Yet somehow, I liked it. I’ll take the frustration at certain points because I certainly am glad to see some interesting innovation, especially in a genre that seems pretty by the numbers. The inclusion of actual licensed cars was nice for me, and probably even more so for car enthusiasts. The story is easy to follow and pretty endearing in a stupid way, and it was refreshingly different. Tanner is a bit weird, and definitely has a bit of an inflated sense of the importance of a good wheelman, but he’s a good protagonist for this story.

The frustrations are definitely there with this game, and it’s not to be understated just how frustrating they are. In the end, however, I had a decent time with Driver: San Francisco, certainly a better time than I was expecting.

I'm pretty sure most of the really high end cars are much rarer out on the road. There are fucking Chargers and Challengers and Mustangs as far as the eye can see, but many of the better sports cars are tougher to find out in the world. The garage is useful for spawning those high end cars and then starting some kind of race side mission.

But yeah, many of the missions require you to switch through multiple cars in multiple locations, or give you a prefab car that has to accomplish a certain task, so you quickly discard your garage-spawned car in a lot of cases. Still, the garage absolutely has its uses.