Review: Driver: San Francisco

I decided to post this as I feel it's a game worth talking about.

I rarely buy new games which means that I don't have a large number of purchase-able games. Most of the games I play are online, although I often get subscriptions for MMOs. Instead, my cousins purchased this and I played it. I beat it twice while there.

Anyway, to the game.

Driver: San Francisco is a driving game. My first thought was that it would boring. I was quite wrong. Not only were the graphics amazing (something that you should realize as soon as you see it) but it had a very cool mechanic for switching cars - shifting. By pressing "Shift", you could leave the car you were in for an overhead view of the street and by clicking another car you can enter it.

The storyline is quite interesting:

Detective John Tanner is the main character. You play as him the whole game. Recently, he had captured Charles Jericho (I believe he chased him in the second Driver game and he caught him in the third). He's quite obsessive about Jericho, a powerful gangster who killed a large number of policemen. As a result, he watched as the police convoy escorted the prison van containing Jericho was attacked by a mysterious woman (who turns out to be Leila Sharan, an Egyptian-American assassin) from a news copter using a rocket launcher. The prison van drives away, and Tanner notices that Jericho is at the wheel (due to using some liquid to dissolve part of his handcuffs and then his massive strength to take down the guards and driver). He follows him into an alley, where Jericho appears behind him and begins to ram his car with the much tougher prison truck. Tanner drives forward and ends up in a multi car collision in the street, at the end of which he is hit directly by a truck. His partner Tobias Jones is also with him but is not injured.

Tanner then wakes up in his car as if nothing had happened. He shifts without trying to, and ends up in an Ambulance as the driver. You have to drive the ambulance to the hospital. Over time you learn to shift higher and higher, as well as how to accelerate and ram (which you can't do in the real world and in certain more realistic missions). You can also purchase upgrades and cars (the cars are useful for the non-story missions and dares while the upgrades give you a number of things) as well as garages. Cars are unlocked by purchasing garages and completing non-story missions while dares and missions give you money to do so. You also get a small amount of money every 20 minutes, whose quantity can be increased significantly by purchasing upgrades (with the last money upgrade, for 500,000 Willpower, the currency in the game, you get 185,000 Willpower ever 20 minutes, more than making up for it after and hour).

During the story, Tanner is shown in a hospital bed in a comatose state, twitching. This is because, as he realizes later, that he's in a Coma, and that all of the things he's been doing had happened in real life except that he had not been able to stop them.

In addition to that, over time, stranger and stranger things happen. The first truly strange occurrence is where, while arguing with Tobias, everything except Tanner's car freezes. Eventually an ambulance shows up and you have to follow it closely to decrease your heart rate in order to allow time to flow again. Later on, it turns out that in Tanner's mind, Jericho can do what he does. Soon after that your final mission is revealed to be saving your own life - by losing to Jericho, Tanner dies, and so he must defeat him at all costs in order to finally wake up (he had woken up for a minute but collapsed onto the floor immediately after). First, you have to drive to a series of locations while avoiding a number of trucks piloted by Jericho. They appear seemingly at random and try to ram you but aren't very persistent. If I'm not mistaken it is at this point that he first awakens, but falls back into a coma. You then have to chase Jericho while he makes cars attack you. His vehicle is a pickup truck in this series of battles and in the final one. At some point, you leave the highway and Tanner and Jericho square off. Jericho taunts him and tells him to try to kill him, but Tanner realizes that it won't help to fight him. Next, you have to chase Jericho along a highway while he zaps cars with lightning, causing them to fly at you. The trick is to stay at around 45 mph (instead of the standard 100+ that you go with most vehicles most of the time) because he throws fewer cars and they're easier to dodge when you can turn and accelerate more effectively. Tanner then appears in a room questioning Jericho about the whole idea of an Hydrogen Cyanide Bomb (as Jericho had abducted an industrial chemist and stolen large quantities of Ammonia and Platinum which are required to make it). He realizes that Jericho isn't a terrorist and that the whole point of the bomb is to divert people's attention and evacuate the city. Now you finally have to beat the mental Jericho - Tanner realizes that if everything is in his head, he should be able to throw cars. You can finally Shift again but this time when you click on a car, it flies at Jericho's Truck. Fortunately, as I discovered, you can do that to the cars that Jericho throws at you while they're in the air, and since you can throw them much more quickly you can beat him rather easily in this one.

Once this happens, and Jericho has been defeated, you reawaken at the hospital. This time you convince Jones to lend you his car as Tanner is the only one who knows what's happening. You drive into the city and watch the explosion, but realize that it's a smokescreen as well as radio interference. When you reach the prison block, you realize that the whole point is that Jericho is creating a prison break. Jericho sees you and flees in his pickup truck, and you have to chase him. Some cars explode (something that happens every so often in the game) along the way. This time, you have to ram him a number of times, until his truck has lost most of its life.You'll then drive into a warehouse, where, in the cars, you square off and charge at each other in an extremely dramatic moment. However, Jones saves you by coming out and ramming Jericho's car in the side, disabling his car. There is a brief discussion and at the end Tanner is shown driving with Jones around San Francisco, ready for new missions. It's a very satisfying end to a cool storyline.

Afterward, you're free to explore the San Francisco of John Tanner's mind (as if he were still in a Coma). Unfortunately, there is no way to replay storyline missions without repeating the storyline and you can only do them in order (where you unlock a few at once, which you must beat to unlock a main storyline mission, and so forth).

The best car in the game is the Lamborghini Murcielago. It's one of the fastest (has a full bar for Speed) and has the most armor and least drift of any car with equal speed (still a lot of drift and low armor, but better than the rest). It costs 500,000, which is less than one other care (the McLaren F1, another car with the same speed but worse drift and armor).

There are essentially three types of missions, as well as a fourth type of challenge, a dare. Dares can be completed once and give you money in exchange for doing something (eg, earning 1500 WP in 60 seconds, 50 meter drift, 100 meter jump, etc). There are many non-story missions - take down the bad guy, protect the police truck from attackers, prevent the school bus from exploding by driving above 60 mph and not hitting lots of cars, etc including many races, some of which you cannot shift in and even accelerate (many of the classic races and chases). Then there are story missions which have little correlation with the main story but which you have to do. A few of these seem to have some correlation (the last two missions where you race using Jun while his brother, Iyamu (not sure how to spell it), criticizes/compliments you, where Iyamu calls you John or John Tanner a few times) but for the most part they are unrelated. Then there are main story missions, each of which you can do after completing some story missions. These are ones directly involved with capturing Jericho.

In my opinion, the story was both too short and just perfect. In some ways, it could have been longer to provide for more missions, but at the same time, it was just the right length (considering that they really didn't have many more possible missions to choose from). All of them were doable with a bit of practice for some.

The graphics are amazing, especially those of the people. They look quite real.

The voice acting is great.

The driving is fun and the shifting makes it worthwhile.

It's a great game, one of the best action games I've played, although I'm still of the opinion that Just Cause 2 is far better than just about any other action game (MMOs are a different sort of game and have to be judged in a different manner).

If you can afford Driver: San Francisco, I suggest purchasing it, because it's very much worth it. It's a fantastic game with a lot going for it and few defects.