Wake up!
When it was announced that the next Driver game was to take place back in San Francisco I couldn’t help but think of how great the original Driver was when it was released. I remember spending hours exploring conveniently placed alleyways, littered with boxes and trash and then plowing through them, feeling like a boss and playing film director with one of the coolest features I remember from any game at the time. It was really hard not to expect the same experience from the next installment in the franchise.
Driver: San Francisco opens with Tanner and his partner Tobias in a loose interpretation of present day San Fransisco. After a quick introduction to the story your vehicle is t-boned by a semi, sending Tanner into a coma. When Tanner awakens he quickly realizes he has gained the power to move between bodies, thus beginning his rein of terror on the denizens of his mind.
One of the biggest problems with the game is that it feels more like an homage to Burnout: Paradise than a Driver game. While in previous installments you were awarded for your vehicle control and punished for breaking the law, Ubisoft has removed all consequence for your actions and replaced it with silly remarks from some of the most unlikeable characters ever put into a game. While I admit I don’t like needing to restart a mission 30 times because I keep ramming into the same parked car, making it too forgiving removes any of the joy you get from pulling off a clean run. This most likely stems from another issue; there are way too many cars on the road. Even in residential and industrial districts you’ll never find an empty strip of road to play around on.
There are also tons of lazy design choices, starting with the “open world”. If you like bombing around parking garages and back alleys this is not the game for you. Allowing the player to float around above the game world leads to you passing over race tracks, hilly parks and parking lots full of cars that you will never be able to access. Even Burnout: Paradise, a devoted racing game had more variety to the explorable locations. This really makes it feel more like a racing game than an open world cop game and takes a lot out of the joy out of exploration. There is also the colour palette which consists entirely of primary colours. Barriers appear as big red walls of liquid, map markers are gigantic yellow and orange beacons that can be seen from miles away along with litters of bright blue icons for events and movie tokens. I hate drab colour schemes just as much as anyone else but it feels like they really dropped the ball on this one. They’ve also replaced the difficulty curve of previous games with rubber banding. While I get that you can’t make a game for everyone there’s nothing wrong with having offering a challenge to a player, especially when there are so many options to choose from.
I’m going to stop criticizing the game here, there is a lot else I have problems with but at this point I realize that I’m being a bit too hard on it.
This game is far from bad, while it is very different from past installments the new mechanics they have introduced are a blast to play around with. All of the vehicles feel different enough from each other that you will want to try everything and the credit/will power system and garages work well to draw you into side missions and exploration. Ubisoft also seems to have taken notes from the Grand Theft Auto series and introduced a lot of humour to the game. Some of it falls flat but a lot of it is genuinely funny. I found myself in a car with a man pretending to be a pirate who surprisingly had a lot to say about my driving, even to the point of breaking character when I took my wrecklessness a little too far. I haven’t had the same passenger twice yet but I already feel like the level of variety is high enough to keep me coming back for at least the foreseeable future.
The cut-scenes are a pleasant change from the past Driver games. They are surprisingly well animated and the voice acting has a lot more dynamics to it than I expected. The main plot line is as flat as expected but tying it in with Tanners new abilities was done extremely well. I almost wish they hadn’t made the fact that Tanner was in a coma as obvious as they did as the “Wake Up” and “Do it again” billboards did a great job at introducing some unease to his situation.
I’m having a hard time rating this game. It may not be what I wanted but it is undeniably very fun. Having the ability to park a semi in front of your fellow racers will never get old and the game does a great job of introducing and teaching the player how to take advantage of these new abilities. That being said, the game does have a lot of flaws and I feel like it’s time for Ubisoft to either completely revamp the franchise with new characters or find a way to implement the new mechanics with a true homage to the car chase. With a reputation for cutting corners and running their franchises into the ground, I highly doubt I will ever get to see a true Driver sequel but I can hope, right?
