Skip to content
Driver San Francisco is the latest in the Driver series, and the basic premise is that the city’s biggest baddie is on the loose: Charles Jericho – and there’s only one man who can stop him. That’s you, by the way. You reprise your role as John Tanner, driving over a 100 different licenced vehicles in the usual free-roaming way with cinematic car chases.
After a crash, John Tanner ends up in the body of Ray, the ambulance driver, when in pursuit of Jericho, early on in the game. At first, I thought, erm… why? Then he soon ends up back in his own car, with his buddy Jones, while seeing odd signs like “Do It Tanner” and one by the hospital that reads “Do it again”. I thought it meant I had to redo that part of the mission, but no. Er… pardon?
Yes, confusion reigned, initially.
And when the game taught me how to ‘shift’ between cars, I didn’t get the reason for doing it at all. However, I was recommended that this was a good thing and I’ve now got into it more as he suggested doing one of the missions where you have to evade the cops, then shifting into another car and getting it to ram the cops to slow them down. It was also suggested that I could jacknife a truck or get a bus to slam across an entire full road, just to have anyone crash into it for a good laugh. Shifting is a bit weird to get the hang of, but now I’m getting into it, it certainly does add something new and interesting to the game, so I have been swung by his argument 🙂
In addition, while the game has a big Quantum Leap feeling at the start, I soon found it was more Life on Mars as you’re actually in a hospital bed following the aforementioned car accident early, so everything you see is all in the mind.
Some pluses about this game:
- While at first it felt like Burnout Paradise, a mis-fire which did away with the fun of Burnout Revenge and had you driving from challenge to challenge, leading to long, dull driving without any excitement, this gives you the option of driving to another one or just shifting to a car nearby, which is a lot easier and quicker.
- There’s a lot of crash/bang/wallop which gives you a great amount of fun as you race about and dodge inbetween the other cars. It’s not the most original game, a lot of the time, but still wonderful fun with bold, colourful, smooth graphics looking fantastic in HD (as you’ll see from the gaming footage) and engaging, realistic engine sounds.
- There’s a cracking soundtrack which includes Aretha Franklin, Dr. John, DJ Shadow, The Black Keys, The Cure, Beastie Boys, Queens of the Stone Age, The Heavy, Unkle and Elbow.
And some downsides:
- When I first played this release, I found the driving took a bit of getting used to as you can’t just swing round a corner and not expect the rest of your car not to dwing round with you, but you soon just about get used to this.
- Annoyingly – although this mostly happens early on in the game before it settles down – instead of just having CGI scenes and then on with the action, the CGI cut-scenes come back in during the middle of missions, which really jars with your gameplay. Why can’t I just play the level from start to finish without all that?
- You can’t get out of the car. Whereas in Driv3r you could get out and indulge in gunfights, here it’s nothing but driving. That sometimes makes it feel weird when you can’t simply get out of one car and walk into the one next to it – you have to ‘shift’.
- You can save up to buy new cars, but I wondered what was the point of this when you can just shift into new ones anyway. This isn’t the only game that’s done this, in terms of taking money from you for such a purchase, so I can’t blame this one, but it does seem a bit of a redundant option.
Also, this game comes with a Uplay account, which is free to register and then gives you ten Uplay points to spend in-game, but while at first it seemed to want a 25-digit code to activate the passport which I thought would presumably come in every retail copy of the game – but wasn’t in with my review copy – I was able to download the passport for free from the Marketplace (108kb in size) and away we go.
This basically allows you access to the Film Director mode, which I remember being a default part of Driver 3 anyway. This mode allows you to look at the last five minutes of your driving and place the cameras at important points around the roads to make your approach and drive-away look cool. However, it’s very long drawn-out and not the sort of thing in which you’ll spend a long time investing your time – at least in my view as I’d rather get out there smashing cars into each other instead.
A collector’s edition is also available – at the moment for Xbox 360 and PS3 – with the PC version to follow. The pack includes a 18×9×9 cm replica of a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T 440 Six Pak, a map of San Francisco detailing the in-game location of the 80 dares scattered across the city, three exclusive in-game cars for multiplayer mode including 1963 Aston Martin DB5, 1972 Lamborghini Miura, and 1966 Shelby Cobra 427, 4 single player challenges: Mass Chase – a wrongfully accused driver attempts to escape the whole police force of San Francisco and prove his innocence, Relay Race – change car between laps to win race, Russian Hills Racers – Race against 3 super cars in the famous district, Taxi – Race against other taxis in Downtown.
You can get a look at the car from the links at the bottom of this review.
See all of the Driver San Francisco videos in my Youtube Playlist here
Visit my DVDfeverGames Youtube channel for many more gaming videos. However, does anyone know how to replay past chapters, so I can record footage from a second go at the final mission of a chapter, when I might have a chance to record it cockup-free?
Important info:
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Price: £49.99 (Xbox 360, PS3); £39.99 (PC)
- Players: single player campaign, multiplayer: 2-8
- HDTV options: 720p/1080i/1080p
- Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes
|
GRAPHICS SOUND GAMEPLAY ENJOYMENT |
10 10 7 8 |
| OVERALL | 9 |
Standard Edition:
Limited Edition:
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.