Games

Driver San Francisco

Driver San Francisco should be a terrible game. It has one of the more bizarre plot devices show-horned into a video game, let alone a driving game, and it's cheesier than an American sitcom. Added to that is a graphics engine that doesn't exactly challenge Gran Turismo 5 and the potential for the game to be a giant case of “and he wakes up at the end”, and you should be looking at a contender for stinker of the year.

Yet Driver San Francisco doesn't suck. In fact, given time, the game shows you that you don't need billion dollar budgets and stunning CGI cut scenes to make a stonking game, you just need guts, guns and great driving.

The aforementioned plot device is the lynchpin that keeps Driver San Francisco ticking. You play as John Tanner, decorated San Francisco police detective, but you also play as random taxi driver, random criminal underling, random learner driver, random asshole; you see in the midst of the case of his career, while tracking the transfer of a criminal kingpin, Tanner is involved in a massive coma-inducing car crash when aforementioned criminal breaks free.

Tanner soon finds himself able, somehow, to assume the body of any driver in any car in San Francisco. Whether a super-powered sports car or a super-slow car transport, if you can see it, Tanner can posses it. It is this tweak on a genre obsessed with the need for speed that gives Driver San Francisco a shot in arm and freedom to play with the conventions of the racing game.

As Tanner and the player begins to realize the predicament they've found themselves in, while not fully understanding it, Driver San Fran slowly unleashes its box full of tricks. More akin to an action-racer like Burnout Paradise, as Tanner filters the real world into his coma, he finds himself righting what once went wrong and saving the day over and over again.

The missions and variety of missions within San Francisco make the core single-player experience enjoyable all the way through its run time. With chase, pursuit, escape, stunt, collision, race and exploration aspects to different mission types, the game always seems to be pulling out original ideas at every turn. One mission may find you racing to the hospital, another pulling off stunts for a TV show or street racing for cash. The sheer options opened up by ghosting through the world and entering any car you like is enormous.

Despite the story sounding far-fetched and unbelievable, Ubisoft Reflections slowly reveal the true nature of what is happening and make the reality of the situation light enough to fit the nature and design of the game.

On top of this is a brilliant series of multi-player types that use the main “ghosting” plot device to stonking effect in variations of tag, pursuit or crash events. Combined with the ability to also play events online or split screen with the “ghosting” disabled and just focused on the cars and Driver San Francisco is a wealth of a package.

Driver San Francisco is one of the surprises of the year, not just in the driving genre, but in gaming in general. A game that may slip under the radar of the masses but certainly deserves a look for any self-respecting fan of the series, racing games or just entertainment in general. A fun, funky blast of fresh freedom, Driver San Francisco is fantastic.

8/10

PlayStation 3 | Xbox 360