I Left "San Francisco" In My Coma
Why couldn't I have played Driver: San Francisco sooner?! This stuff is what I'm talking about!!! (WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOI--OH WHO CARES?!)
This is my diamond in the rough from 2011, and yes I know it's two and-a-half months into 2012. This, of course, was a game I was able to get through Gamefly and play that way. (I still have a bone to pick with Gamefly and Netflix, by the way!)
Gameplay:
One word: AWESOME!!! Driver starts out with introducing the main characters: Detective John Tanner and his partner Detective Tobias Jones. The main villain is Jericho, who has a big rivalry against Tanner. Jericho escapes in this big armored vehicle, and it gets to a point where you think you have him trapped. Somehow he gets behind you, slamming you into traffic and leaving you in a coma. It then places you back in the city, making you think everything is normal. However you can do things with cars you would never be able to do in real life such as the nitro and ramming options they give you. The thing about the coma aspect of the game is that it has to be one of the coolest setups in gaming history! You find out that you're able to pop up to a bird's eye view of the city, zoom in anywhere, and proceed to transfer into any car you want. (Watch video below, as it will blow your mind!)
The badassery of this game is just amazing! They have over a hundred licensed cars in San Francisco, each one having their own feel toward the driving. They have Ford (bleh!), Chevy (Meh), Lamborghini (sweet!), McLaren (hell ya), and -- of course -- my favorite Dodge vehicles. The car that you're driving around in with the main character is a Dodge Challenger. This vehicle is super sweet, and is great in the handling department, especially when performing burnouts, donuts (not the food), 180s, jumps, drifting, and all the things you would love to do in real life with a car. Next to that, if you wreck the car you're in you can simply pop into another vehicle that is nearby and drive off like it's nothing.
Driver's story has an interesting setup because when you are playing the game in "coma mode", you have to play the missions that deal with the actual story. It might not seem like the side races or helping police capture bad guys goes toward the stories, but it does. It's amazing when your doing the out-of-body experience and hopping into other vehicles because the person you pop into might have someone else in the car, leading towards awkward conversations. Fortunately this is another tactic in the story that helps you find out more information.
The story keeps going on, and you come to find out the Jericho is able to control cars and toss them around the road at you. Let's just say the story gets even more interesting once the plot finally thickens. From the point you start out at they had stolen platinum, and they were trying to get another special thing to create a bomb that would take out downtown San Francisco. In this case I would rather have you get the game and find out what happens. It really gets my criminal justice fluids going.
Final Verdict:
Driver: San Francisco is juicy! It's got sweet vehicles, along with the capabilities of being able to jump and take over other cars. You don't even have to think about it; just press a button, switch to another car on the other side of the road, drive it off, slam into another vehicle, and finally pop back into the main vehicle. I like the overall feel of the game, which kind of resembles old-school Starsky and Hutch, where you have the old muscle cars burning out and doing ridiculous jumps. (I'd really like to see Grand Theft Auto try to beat that.)
PROS:
- Amazing graphics and soundtrack
- Controls are easy to figure out
- Story is so good, it deserves to be turned into a movie!
CONS:
- Can't put transferred cars in your garage
- No General Lee (that would've been too perfect!)
FINAL GRADE: 9.5 (out of ten)
Driver: San Francisco
Developer: Ubisoft Reflections
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platforms: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC
Genre: Racing
Official Website
As for the multiplayer aspect, I could not play it due to the fact I didn't want to pay for the Uplay setup in order to get online, seeing that I didn't own the game. I will return to talk about that once I buy it, as this game is that freaking awesome!!!
OFF-TOPIC P.S.: Gamefly, please be better at setting up your game list. When we put up our order of games, it doesn't send them in that order. As for Netflix -- and I think people will agree on this is -- why can't you push the movies that were already seen out of the suggested lists of movies you put up? I swear I put the ratings on the movies, but somehow they keep popping up.
