Game Review: Driver: San Francisco

Game: Driver: San Francisco
Console: Sony Playstation 3
Developer: Ubisoft
Release Date: 6th September 2011

As the fifth game in the Driver home console series, Driver: San Francisco had a lot to prove; firstly that it was better than the likes of Driv3r which was criticised for its poor storyline and glitches, and secondly that it could sell better than Driver: Parallel Lines, which received slightly better reviews, but sold fairly poorly. To regain consumer trust is the series, the developers decided to shift the focus from driving and on-foot missions to simply driving missions. The style of the game remains faithful to the first three in the series, giving a nod towards car chase movies of the 70s.

The plot follows Detective John Tanner as he attempts to thwart the career criminal Jericho's plans once again. From fairly early on in the game it's fairly heavily implied that Tanner is in a coma, following a traffic accident involving Jericho. Inside Tanner's coma, players complete driving missions such as stunts, chases and races around the city to help its residents out, as well as story missions. To help Tanner in these missions, players can use the abilities to shift between vehicles (an alternative to GTA style stealing), boost and ram vehicles. Use of these abilities save for shifting between vehicles, drain the ability meter which can be upgraded at garages.

Driving generally feels fairly loose and drifty in faster cars, with a greater feeling of weight and grip in heavier cars (though ideally players wont be spending much time in those). The boost and ram abilities are easy to use and make chase, takedown and race missions easier. The ability to shift cars is a pretty unique idea which is well executed and sets the game apart from others in the sandbox/driving genre. Using shift in missions can be very useful, and even just for when players have destroyed their car and want a new one, it's a well implemented mechanic.

Most, if not all of the cars in the game are licensed models of real world vehicles, available for purchase from garages around the city which can be bought with willpower points (earned for driving stunts and completing missions). There is a huge area which is available to explore in game, with around 208 miles of San Francisco roads once all of the areas have been unlocked. The city never really feels particularly large when playing the story missions due to the ability to shift across the city incredibly quickly.

Plot-wise the game is fairly short; even with some messing around and retrying a few missions here and there I was able to complete the game within around 12 hours. There were still plenty of side missions such as driving dares, and checkpoint events as well as cars and garages to buy, however. While I appreciated the concise nature of the story mode, and not being subjected to a 90 mission snore-fest, I felt that the final mission and ending didn't quite live up to the rest of the game. Not in such a way that it ruined the experience for me, but I could really have done with more of a challenge to end the game.

One of the best aspects of Driver: San Francisco is the game's humour and ability to joke whilst taking itself fairly seriously. Sometimes after shifting into a random car, players will hear snippets of conversation revealing parody style snapshots of daily life in the game's representation of the city. The overall mood of the game is stuck between Tanner's incredulity at his new found shifting powers and the seriousness of Jericho's plot, but in a way that doesn't cheapen either emotion.

Graphically both the city of San Francisco and the vehicles traversing it look sharp and realistic, running at 60 frames per second without any drop in framerate. Pedestrians can't be run over by cars, and so sometimes pass through them if there's not enough time to get out of the way, and the mini-map is either too small to plan a route, or blocking the player's view of where they're heading, but these were my only criticisms of the graphical effects and layout. The music chosen for the game is a selection of unremarkable songs, none of which I took much notice of whilst playing.

Overall Driver: San Francisco is a short but well executed driving game; the focus on pure driving missions and the addition of car shifting were both great design decisions, and nearly every mission is enjoyable or at least worth the effort. Free roaming after the game is complete, and unlocking all cars/completing all dares is an attractive prospect due to the fun gameplay and short play time, giving the game some replayability. With excellent graphics and a great sense of humour, this is quite possibly the best game in the Driver series, and comes close to being a truly great game.

Rating: 87/100
Grade: B