Driver San Francisco

Review from Cav - Wednesday, 12 October 2011 @ 12:40am

Let’s face it: the setting of San Francisco for anything involving wheels, be it in movies or games, always equals awesome… if that is even a proper sentence. In fact, I don’t care if it is or not. All that aside, I really have to mark Driver: San Francisco down as yet another game that I wanted to love but couldn’t. The PR machine at Ubisoft did such an awesome job of promoting this puppy, that each time I saw it I wanted it even more. I even told you guys how much I wanted it. So I got my hands on a copy and sat myself down for some madness behind the wheel. And madness is exactly what I got, but not in the context I was hoping for.

You know what they call it? Royale with Cheese...

Driver San Fran has a fantastic concept behind it and I do enjoy it, but the ability to have an ‘out of body experience’ and become the driver of any other car on the road has both its pros and cons. I do find that trying to find a car to swap to mid challenge or during multiplayer can be quite difficult when under pressure. Swapping cars in Multiplayer can be frustrating to the point of chucking the controllers, as other players have the same idea as you and manage to steal a vehicle just as you locate it. The upside to this ‘Hot-swapping’ is listening to the conversations occurring in these various cars: full credit to the scriptwriters and voice actors there. Another thumbs up goes to the soundtrack, as it really sets the scene and works well with the era and the action.

I do applaud the variety of vehicles available; it’s quite an extensive range. There’s nothing quite like jumping a Kombi Van off a hill, or the back of a rolling Car Transport. Actually there’s nothing like trying to jump a Car Transporter off the back of a Car Transporter that’s trying to jump off a hill… How do you like them apples Jackass guys? Each car drives, sounds and looks different, which says a lot for the creators of Driver San Francisco. I know I was bitching about the amount of content to Driver SF, but if you don’t complete it, you don’t get cars – simple as that. It’s nice that the cars don’t fall to bits the moments you make impact with the road or I would be looking for a car every 1.4 minutes. The damage that vehicles can sustain is very generous to say the least, which can often save you from having swap bodies and take control of another car.

Is that a Terminator driving that truck?

The madness I referred to in my opening paragraph pertains to the size game itself: Driver SF has tons to do. Actually I think there is too much to do. Way too much. With all of the races, stunts, challenges and other events, I often found myself forgetting about the storyline then struggling to recall what the hell I was meant to do and where I was meant to be headed. Yes the challenges are fun, with some of them quite difficult, but there is way too much stuff. I suppose that the skate series from EA had basically the same amount of content to complete, but for some strange reason in Driver it just feels more like an imposition than a series of events to attempt.

It’s great to see a multiplayer element in this game and see that it’s not just racing. There is a nice variety of events to play through but they all seem to be over quite quickly. Maybe it’s the qualifying and then racing breaking up the process that seems to shorten the fun. The qualifying is a good idea though, as it’s not always fun starting at the back of the grid if your driving skills sucked in the previous race and the race before that…. and the two before that one.

I want to make a reference to Automan, but I'm so fucking old no one will get it

Pros

• Huge amount of content
• Big selection of cars with varying characteristics
• Very unique concept

Cons

• Huge amount of content
• Short multiplayer games