First Impressions of Driver San Francisco

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In a break from tradition, I’m not going to reveal how I feel about this game in my opening sentence. So far I’m about 3 to 4 hours into the game, so that’s why I’m only doing a first impressions post. Full review will probably follow at some point.

San Francisco is the fifth game in the Driver series, which got rubbish at about the third one when you could get out and walk around. SF has done away with that, once again restricting you to your car. Sort of. You see, early on in the game you’re character, John Tanner, is put into a coma and events from then on actually play out in his head. This, of course, means that he can do pretty much whatever he wants. Including jumping into any car in the entire city. Oh yes, from pretty much the third mission it lets you jump around a sizeable chunk of San Francisco, with more becoming unlocked as you progress. This is really well done, smoothly letting you zoom out from your car and into a birds-eye view of the city, and then transitioning back into another car. Many cars feel individual as well, as some have passengers still in them. This, of course, leads to humorous moments of Tanner trying to work out what conversation he’s inadvertently put himself into whilst speeding over moving ramp-truck things.

Even this isn’t Tanner’s only trick up to this point, but it is the most fun one. Others include being able to give the car a boost (annoyingly bound to pushing the left-stick forward, leading to many accidental boosts) and being able to shunt other cars. These both come in pretty useful in the missions, especially the shunt, as it allows you to do a bunch of damage to the opposition.

Master segue alert, those missions include a fairly decent variety. Whilst there are the main story missions, some of which need to be completed before you can do the next ‘Tanner’ mission, there are others scattered about the city. These are usually challenges, such as checkpoint racing or doing stupid dares like driving really fast without hitting anything. Completing these gives you points which can be spent on new cars, upgrades to your abilities and unlocking more garages, which unlock more cars and challenges to complete. The whole thing is a nicely integrated mechanic, as you get points for doing pretty much anything cool, like drifting, overtaking, doing cool jumps and the like. All of these events are accessible from the 'shift' view which Tanner can go into.

Of course, being able to see basically the whole map and jump into pretty much every moving car takes its toll. Playing on PC a few feet away from the screen makes the textures look iffy at best. Anti-aliasing (getting rid of those jagged edges) also seems to be absent in many cases. The cut-scenes, on the other hand, look really good, which is why it’s weird that they’ve decided to put all of the driving in the cut-scenes in the in-game engine. They’re presented in different boxes on the screen, which is cool, but really highlights the lack of polish in the game.

Still, I don’t really think it matters. The cars feel so nice to drive, and the whole atmosphere of the game is so well done that you’ll find yourself not even noticing. The music is great, the sound effects are great, the dialogue is great. Whether you’re running down some bad guys whilst you flit between several different police cars (quick-shifting with one button is awesome by the way, a great solution to keep you in the action) or trying to beat a street gang in a race, they all manage to feel like a good racing movie. Perhaps the best example is one of the challenges you can unlock, which basically casts you as a criminal trying to reach a destination in time whilst racing against the clock and being constantly hounded by a squadron of police cars. No shift. No powers. Just pure, hard driving. And the fact that even without the fancy powers that this is possibly the most enjoyable thing so far is testament to how good this game really is. I look forward to playing more of it.