Driver: San Francisco is an amazing addition to the great Driver series (minus Driv3r... obviously)!
Driver: San Francisco is the first Tanner-based Driver game since 2004, in which Tanner was shot in the back by his sworn-enemy and criminal meathead chum, Jericho.
This game takes place a few, long, LONG months after the pivotal events of Driv3r, which technically means that Driver: San Francisco is set in the year 2005. In other words, its set in the past!
You play as Detective John Tanner, a roguish cop who has travelled to San Francisco to see his arch-nemesis and drug and car smuggling kingpin, Charles Jericho, face his sentence. He is paraded across town in a police convoy. A hired, female killer however soon breaks up the convoy by firing a rocket at the lead police car. Jericho manages to break out of his chains and hijack the armored police van. You must then chase him through the streets of San Francisco. He dives into an alleyway, into which you follow him. As you enter the alley, it appears he has somehow vanished into thin air! It soon turns out that he has tricked you and your returning partner, Tobias Jones. He is behind you! He continually rams you from behind in the narrow alley. You approach a busy main road. You hit the brakes. Jericho hits you again and sends you flying on to the road, hitting a van, a car (which spins you out), which causes a big pile up in the middle of the road, forcing a truck driver to turn sharply to avoid it. The driver of the truck consequently smashes into your side of the car, plunging you into a coma, and allowing the main, unique, gameplay mechanic, 'Shift', to rear its awesome head!
The good:
1) The graphics are very good for an open-world, mission-based driving game.
2) The city is massive with 200+ miles of pure road, dirt tracks, alleyways, and side-streets at your complete and utter disposal.
3) The number of missions (which include both main missions and side missions) there are over 200!
4) For the first time in Driver's long history, this game has over 120 real licensed cars which all sound, handle, look, and feel completely different to each other. They are also all fully destructible.
5) The brand-new and completely original mechanic, Shift, works really well and really does help to increase the level of fun of the entire game, both on and offline. For example, you are a cop, and you are in pursuit of a fleeing criminal. You crash and begin to lose him. What do you do? In other games, that's it, you have lost him and have got to start the mission again. In Driver: SF, oh-no! You simply press X or A and travel ahead and use a massive lorry to smash into the getaway and ram him off the road.
6) This is the first game (correct me if I am wrong), I think, to have such realistic driving. If you take a sharp corner, your character's hands will cross-over! Which is a first in driving game history.
7) The speech is very nearly always in sync with the mouths of the characters.
8) The cars on offer are almost all awesome!
9) There are a lot of unexpected twists and turns to the story.
10) The multiplayer is amazing and features modes you wouldn't think would be anywhere near anything to do with metal and four wheels, such as Tag and Capture the Flag!
11) The story is ridiculous but in a good way.... if that's possible!
12) The screenplay of the game is amazing!
13) Another new mechanic is 'Boost'. Boost works like nitrous in a Need for Speed game; it is temporary, refuels itself, and provides an instant speed boost.
14) The music is fantastic and works really well, and, when you it doesn't work, you can always change to find what you like using the left and right buttons on the D-pad.
15) Driver: San Francisco runs at 60 frames per second. That's right, this game is kind enough to refresh your screen 60 times a second!
16) 'Ram' is also a new mechanic to any game (as far as I know, anyway!). It works by pressing and holding L1 (PS3 controls) or LB (Xbox 360) to charge it up (using the same bar for the Boost mechanic). When you release L1/LB, it sends your car/van/truck flying forward quickly to ram someone coming in your direction or someone in front of you, helping inflict extra damage on your opponent. The only downside to this is the fact that if you miss your target and your own car is behind it, you can accidently wreck your car! Oops....
17) Every vehicle in the game, whether it is seen/used in a story mission (known as a Tanner mission in-game), side mission, dare, or challenge, it can be bought from one of the city's many garages.
The bad:
1) Some cutscenes are pointless and unnecessary and can feel like they are simply there to fill up the game.
2) The running commentary provided by Tanner can eventually get annoying, especially when you have failed and are restarting the mission. For example: "Woah! I just went to another car!" Yes, Tanner, I know, because I'm the player and I did it! "Look, now I'm driving!" Yes, I know, that's why this game is called 'Driver'! "I just jumped over a bridge and crashed into the back of a bus!" I KNOW, SHUT UP!!
3) Occasionally, the frame rate may lag when you drive on multiplayer.
4) The visuals can, at times, get a little fuzzy and hazy.
5) The handling of even some super-cars (the McLaren F1 and Pagani Zonda F are the main offenders) can be so realistic, it gets annoying. For example, as you take a corner at speed in a race which you are winning in and nearing the end of the race, you pass over onto the other side of the road. As you cross over the road line, a car lightly taps you. You instantly spin out and drop right back to last place, having, a few seconds ago, been winning. You now lose the race and have to restart the whole race again!
Thank you all for reading my review of Driver: San Francisco for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. If you have any comments/complaints about my review, please help me edit it by sending me a quick message (at justcool2). Happy gaming!