Review: Driver: San Francisco
After a streak of lackluster games that suffered from flimsy controls and weak gameplay, it looks like John Tanner has taken a few lessons from Scott Bakula and learned the profitable art of leaping into different bodies. His newly attained powers manifest during a coma that he enters after colliding into the sinister Charles Jericho during his escape from prison. Tanner doesn’t know he is dreaming, and the entire game takes place in his head.
Like the original Driver, this game will keep you behind the wheel, completing various missions that give you clues on Jericho’s whereabouts and ultimate motive. Taking full advantage of its premise, you aren’t restricted to the same vehicle and you can easily change cars whenever you want without getting your hands dirty. Tanner’s power is called shifting and it lets him possess any car he wants from a bird’s eye view.
Your first time shifting will feel very strange and disorienting because it interrupts your driving and forces you to switch rides, taking you away from the action and into the skies. But because the world slows down while you are picking a car, you’ll return to the action in a flash. Tanner’s ghostly powers will grow over time allowing you to boost, ram into cars, and zoom out to get a bigger scope of the city. Also, you’ll be playing in a world where the only weapons you’ll use are the cars driving past you, so you will need to possess cars and use them for head-on collisions with enemies you’re chasing down.
Shifting is the game’s main feature, and it really opens up a world of fun possibilities that you couldn’t get away with in the real world. Each mission you encounter involves shifting into the lives of different people and helping them with whatever they have going on in their lives. Whether you are helping a pair of Japanese students win street races for tuition money, keeping the speed of a booby-trapped truck over 60 mph, or driving a patient to the hospital while keeping his heart rate steady, the missions you’ll shift into are memorable as they are exciting.
The game’s audio is truly one of Driver’s highlights as it draws you into Tanner’s comatose world. Driver games aren’t known for their plots, and while this one is no different, Tanner’s wit and sarcasm are what keep it alive and engaging. The dialogue you’ll hear during each mission is well written, and each passenger brings a new personality to the table. Tanner and his passenger will also pop up on screen during their conversations to further draw you into their backstory. The game’s soundtrack brings it back to its chase-movie roots, blending both modern and classic tunes that range from funky to electronic. While the game takes place in the present time, the songs and background music give Driver a distinct 70s vibe.
Tanner’s sharp tongue isn’t the only impressive thing about the game’s presentation. Every time you complete a chapter or load up your game, you will be greeted by an episodic cut-scene recapping the events in the game like a TV show. The game’s graphics are impressive during these cutscenes as you can see amazing detail in a character’s face and clothing. Even during regular gameplay, the game gives you great panoramas in crisp 60fps.
Though Driver may have unique and entertaining missions, there aren’t a lot of them to enjoy. The witty banter behind the wheel is also lost once you beat the game, which is about ten hours long. Once you finish all main missions, you are left with a silent world full of generic short mini-missions like races, stunts, and dares that can be completed to score in-game currency that lets you purchase garages, vehicles, and abilities. The game offers a new game plus option, but you’ll just be playing the same missions again under the same conditions.
While the game’s story may be short and sweet, each mission is different and doesn’t suffer from being repetitive. I’ve never had to place both first and second in a race before, but thanks to Tanner’s shifting powers, that’s what the game makes you do. Aside from the cars you can purchase, Driver also has collectible tokens for you to find that unlock special challenge missions that further extend the game’s playtime. After beating the game, I checked my stats to realize I had only completed 47% of the game. Completionists, take note!
Most of the game’s difficulty comes from mastering how to control the many vehicles in the game. Each one feels and drives differently, and a lot of them have a tendency to drift quite a bit. I found that the enemy AI was very forgiving in many of the race-based missions since I often found myself making last second comebacks because the AI seemed to wait for me to catch up. During these racing missions, the traffic, and not the other racers, was what kept me from first place.
Aside from its story and missions, Driver also offers a robust multiplayer mode that is surprisingly hard to put down. You can play split-screen local multiplayer or you can engage in eight-player online modes such as tag, capture the flag, and traditional lap races. Some of these modes make use of shifting, so matches like tag will have you planning the best cars to shift into to surprise your opponents. The game tracks your wins and rewards you with even more unlockable goodies.
Driver: San Francisco is a great arcade-style driving game that presents you with a beautiful and entertaining world from start to finish and an innovative shifting feature that is successfully incorporated into the gameplay. Its biggest flaws come from its short life-span and loose driving controls that take some getting used to. If more games need to borrow zany plot devices from shows like Quantum Leap and Dallas, so be it. Driver: San Francisco is blast to play.
Score given: N/A
Published September 2011 | X360Online.net
Giancarlo Saldana is a freelance writer and Gaming News Editor for Blast Magazine.