Driver: San Francisco Review

By Martin Robinson Published 26 August, 2011

Tanner the best.

Version tested: PlayStation 3

Games are full of excuses, whether they're telling you that a terrorist strike has closed off half the city you're exploring or that swimming is a bad idea when you have electricity coursing through your veins. As excuses go though, Driver: San Francisco throws up one of the more outrageous.

You're John Tanner, undercover cop, wheelman and faded gaming icon, and after one high-speed altercation with your nemesis Jericho within the opening 10 minutes, you're also in a coma.

What that preposterous set-up excuses, however, is something quite brilliant. Drifting through the fog of San Francisco in the haze of a dream, Tanner can shift from car to car, possessing citizens in a mechanic that's as inspired as it is bizarre.

At first, shifting just feels like a neat and snappy way to move from car to car. You'll be stalking the skies like an automotive magpie, waiting for a set of wheels that take your fancy before, at the press of a button, landing in the driver's seat.

The lure of XP - or, in Driver: San Francisco's parlance, Willpower - provides a gentle tug down from the heavens, generously doling out points for dodging traffic, catching air or holding onto a drift. It's a currency that also unlocks new cars and garages as well as expanding the boundaries of some of Tanner's special powers.

But shift soon becomes much, much more, and it's a pleasure to watch developer Reflections wrangle mileage out of the feature. Taking down cars quickly becomes an artful juggling act as an entire swarm of rush hour traffic is placed at your disposal, and snapping from one side of the city to another in a swift manoeuvre is central to many missions. There are smarter applications too: winning a race is one thing, but how about coming first, second and third?

It's a mechanic that's explored even further in a multiplayer suite that has a whiff of Midtown Madness in the chaos it provokes. Generous playlists are bundled together, and while point-to-point races play a part it tends towards the more boisterous as games of tag and follow-the-leader descend into heady carnage.

Driver's mini-map deserves praise, expanding at the touch of a button and proving more useful than most.

Shift's real achievement, however, is in placing the focus of the game firmly behind the steering wheel. This particular Driver, funnily enough, is all about driving, and given how the series has previously faltered as soon as it stepped outside of the car, that's a very smart move.

If it's all a little flimsily framed, Newcastle developer Reflections at least plays it for laughs. Driver: San Francisco, when it's got its story face on, often feels like a Carry On film directed by Christopher Nolan.

This is a city that's dense with characters, and leaping from car to car throws up a seemingly never-ending succession of skits; finding yourself in charge of a school run, leaping into the midst of a lover's tiff or between two sparring work colleagues and, at one brilliant juncture, between two policemen having an illicit affair (unfortunately Tanner never mutters "Oh boy" when doing so - an opportunity sadly missed).

For each moment of ticklesome slapstick there's another of striking dreamlike imagery - a city deserted, or one that's been dramatically put on pause. Driver: San Francisco's core storyline exploits such moments to full effect, managing to gingerly toe a line that means, while it's never exactly credible or plausible, it's at the very least enjoyable.

Thankfully, the handling is robust enough to bear the weight that's now been placed on it. This being Driver, there's an emphasis on heavy tail ends, inspiring aggressive slides that are easy to catch and delightful to snap into. It is, if anything, a little too tailored towards the theatrical, and the ease with which the cars can be whipped around means they often feel a little insubstantial.

Cars are also kitted out with a handful of arcade extras that just don't sit quite right. A rechargeable boost that can be steadily upgraded feels clumsy - not least in how it's awkwardly placed on the left stick. A ram feature feels just as out of place, and while it fills a certain place in the aggression of an online game of tag, it ultimately feels like an unnecessary appendage.

Reflections has at least ensured that while it's a theatre that's a little shallow it's one that's spectacular, with Driver: San Francisco's bespoke engine tailored to show the cars at their best. First there's the steady 60fps that makes them feel smooth as butter, and then there are the little details that give them strong visual feedback. Weight visibly shifts around, and tyre smoke, in particular, impresses, with thick white plumes dancing through wheel arches.

It's all about the driving, then, and it's incredible how much driving there is to do in Driver: San Francisco. Nearly every street corner of this expansive open world seems to harbour a fresh challenge: see how far you can jump in 60 seconds, drift 300 metres, leapfrog as many car transporters as you can...

These dares sit among straight races and each of Driver's eight chapters also hosts two to three core missions that must be ticked off before you can progress the main story. They're a novel bunch that only occasionally head towards the frustration that's mired previous Drivers, although one story mission, near the very end, is a teeth-grinding exercise in trial and error.

But the story and its various missions are just another distraction in a game that's positively drowning in them. First there's a car list that is, perhaps unsurprisingly given the premise, packed with dream cars. One moment you'll be dodging freeway traffic, chasing down a Murcielago in a McLaren MP4-12C, while another might see you off-road in one of a selection of Group B cars, Lancia Stratos taking on Ford RS200s on a mud track on the city's outskirts.

Move off the menu and there's more. Movie Challenges, available when you're parked up in one of the city's many unlockable garages, are a reasonable answer for those wondering how a pure Driver game would act this generation. The supernatural powers are stripped away and the set-pieces are stolen wholesale from seventies cinema classics. Thinly masked references to Bullitt's Mustang and Vanishing Point's Dodge Challenger are put to the test in a mode that comes complete with its own grindhouse filter.

San Francisco, of course, is the capital of the car chase and iconic locations such as the winding Lombard Hill and the steep steps of Filbert Street are used well. But otherwise, the city disappoints, drawn in a fuggy haze and with an overplayed sepia palette that's no doubt there to serve the dreamlike ambience - and in the case of the haze to keep it ticking over at 60fps. It makes for a curiously unengaging playground and a blight on what's otherwise an admirable game.

Driver: San Francisco isn't quite the jolt that the arcade driving genre needs to stir it from its own particular coma, then, but it's an endearing and eccentric experience in itself. In Reflections' best work since the Driver series began, it's managed to tame the ridiculous and conjure something quite sublime.

8 / 10

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About Martin Robinson

Martin is Eurogamer's features editor with responsibility for commissioning, editing and often writing our feature and preview content. He's also passionate about driving games.

Read more articles from Martin by visiting the Martin Robinson archive page.

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