Driver: San Francisco: Review

I am driving an A-Team van into the back of a moving truck. I am smashing through boxes in a muscle car and peeling through a dusty back alley while a wah-wah pedal infused guitar plays. I am flying through the air in a Viper, cresting the iconic slopes of The City, giving chase to some criminal.

In all of these moments I am playing Driver: San Francisco.

For me, this game basically fulfilled every fantasy I’ve ever had of peeling out to some sweet 70s heist music while dodging around traffic at high speeds. I got to be Bullet, BA Baracus, both of The Duke Boys (not from the shitty film, but the original TV show) and Michael Knight all at the same time.

This love letter to all things Starsky and Hutch sets its tone from the very beginning. You play as undercover cop Tanner in a beefed up Dodge Challenger. Your partner is a wisecracking ‘Fro toting black guy and your main villain is a dude by the name of Jericho. Jericho is in prison but soon makes a spectacular escape during a transfer between two state penitentiaries. The main character gives chase but falls into a trap that leaves him in a coma.

After that it gets really weird. It quickly becomes clear that it isn’t just 80s and 70s chase scenes that the game takes inspiration from. While your character lies in a hospital bed he dreams that he’s driving around San Francisco, solving crimes that his enfeebled, comatose self can hear being broadcast on the radio and television. His conscious desire to stop Jericho in the real world manifests in this dream state and becomes the crux of the storyline… except Tanner isn’t limited to being just the driver of his own car.

In his unconscious state Tanner is able to shift out of his body, into that of almost anyone else in the subconsciously manufactured San Francisco, and subsequently take control of their vehicle. The first time this happens Tanner takes control of the ambulance driver apparently escorting him to the hospital. He looks up into the mirror and sees the reflection of the driver and not himself, double takes and has a classic Quantum Leap-style ‘oh boy!’ moment.

This introductory twist is a clever way to excuse the mechanic of jumping from mission to mission, but it also leads to some very interesting in-mission choices.

With the ability to switch into the body of almost anyone at any time, you’re given the chance to tackle objectives completely differently. For example, you could try and chase after some street racers in a cop car and ram them off the road, or you could just jump into a vehicle in the oncoming traffic and cause a head-on collision for the perpetrators. When the tables are turned you might choose to outrun the cops by taking control of a truck driver and blocking the entire road to cut off of their pursuit, then jump back into your original vehicle and speed away from the corralled officers.

The developers have done a great job at mixing up the activities in between story missions, with it taking a good 10 hours before you start to feel the grind. I don’t think this fact should be held against the game; the sheer number and variety of missions cannot be faulted (you don’t have to do them all if you don’t want to). It takes 10 hours before you even start to feel the need to play the story missions, whereas most games end after 8 hours of story and side-missions combined. The appeal of Driver: SF lies in the wide selection of cars, all of which lean towards the drift heavy side of the spectrum – which is in line with the theme of the game – but they all handle distinctly differently and test driving everything is fun. Every corner is taken with a hand brake applied and every burnout is deeply satisfying, not just visually but also in terms of audio and tactile feedback.

Like the recently released Saints Row: The Third, Driver: SF rewards you with ‘willpower’ for everything that you do, be it drifting, boosting, jumping or overtaking. All of these willpower points can be used to purchase more cars and upgrades, making nipping around The City even more of an incentive.

Even if the side missions do eventually start to drag the story missions never let up. So when the street racing, cop chases and period funk soundtrack gets a bit too repetitive, there is the rather nutty main thread there to break up the pattern.

The game turns several seemingly straightforward missions on their heads with the main character slowly realising the predicament he’s in which, in turn, leads to strange things manifesting in his dream world. When this happens it messes with the player in the most awesome way. In one of the more restrained sections, you possess the body of a criminal-tailing Tanner while simultaneously controlling Tanner. The mission is played from the trailing driver’s perspective (the view showing his hands on the wheel looking out through his front windshield) while controlling Tanner’s car in front. It’s ideas like this that bring Driver: San Francisco to life.

This same creative approach is also brought to the online portion of the game: there are straightforward checkpoint races to be had but the real fun is when you get into the races and challenges that involve the warping powers. Best of the lot is Tag, where one car is ‘it’ until one of the players manages to bump into it, at which point all the other players have to try and tag that player to gain points. The trick is that they can possess any car in the world to do so. With only two players it gets a little dull but when you have a full group of players jumping into cars to tag their opponent the action goes absolutely crazy. In good company these modes are hilarious and in bad company they’re almost better, because there’s nothing quite like getting sworn at by someone for causing a head on collision when they thought they were in the clear.

For the duration of the 14 hours I put into Driver: San Francisco, I couldn’t think of a more complete package. Credit has to go out to the developers Ubisoft Reflections (formerly Reflections Interactive, who made the dismal Driv3r) for managing to pull this series back from the brink, put a cigar in their collective mouths and proudly proclaim “I love it when a plan comes together.”