A rare gem in the Driver franchise
It has been a long time since I have played a Driver game. Not since the second game came out back on the first PlayStation. As I am sure most of you can attest, the franchise has not received any praise since those PS1 days. But now there is an installment that is creating some positive buzz. That game would be the latest, Driver: San Francisco. I did enjoy the crap out of the first two Driver games, and I felt the itch for a good driving game so I figured I would take this one for a test drive.
Okay bad puns aside, this is by far the best Driver game in a long time and even one of the best in the genre. I can’t even remember the last good driving game I played. The story see’s detective Tanner back where he belongs, behind the wheel. You are once again pursuing Jericho but this time things go a little sideways. The entire game takes place in Tanner’s head. That’s right, Tanner falls into a coma following a car accident while pursuing his nemesis and the majority of the game takes place in his shattered mind.
Now before you write this off as being a lame story, it really isn’t. Devising the story in this fashion enables them to do some pretty awesome things. Such as the most interesting thing to happen to games of this genre in a long time, shifting. The core gameplay mechanic has you jumping into other cars. You don’t actually ever leave your car though, that would be lame, instead Tanner’s consciousness can body hop from car to car. But this is not to get a new car every time you total your last set of wheels no instead it allows your car to go on a sort of auto pilot as you jump into a different car and attempt to manipulate your surroundings. So racing becomes more about destroying your opponents rather than passing them. Cop chases become more about throwing buses at them rather than smashing them yourself. The developers really get a lot of millage out of that one simple concept.
On top of that the rest of the game is pretty awesome as well. You have your core story based missions, racing, police, and other activities, challenges, and then there are the dares. The dares are probably my favorite little supplement to the story. A dare is basically a simple little objective such as staying above 100mph while in oncoming traffic for 20 seconds, or jump 6 cars off of a car transport in 60 seconds, or handbrake stop 100 meters. This stuff is just a great little quick thing you can do to earn the in game currency which is used to buy different cars, garages, and upgrades.
The biggest issue I had was the car handling. They encourage you to drift through turns, even going as far to make it one of the three stats the vehicles have, but I never really got the hang of drifting around corners. It just never worked for me, I would always spin out of control or go too short and hit a wall. Obviously I was able to cope enough to make it through the game, but that learning curve was steep and I never really got the hang of it. This is a problem when driving is pretty much all you do in the game.
But I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, I loved Driver San Francisco. It was a great all around experience and successfully soothed that itch I had for a good driving game. The story is good, the gameplay mechanics, aside from the car handling, were fantastic, and the presentation, which made it feel like a 70’s car chase movie, was superb. The only thing I worry about is the future of the series because I don’t really see this being a big hit the second time around when it isn’t new. But worrying about the future of the franchise doesn’t really belong in a review so for now just know that this is a fantastic driving game and if you had a similar itch for one, scratch it with this.
