 Buckle up. A criminal mastermind escapes from prison and managed to put the cop who put him there into a coma. Now that cop needs to think his way through the coma, figuring out where the criminal went and why he is terrorizing San Francisco.
NOTE: This review does not apply to the Wii version, which featured a completely different story and set of gameplay mechanics. 1. Gameplay
Racing games are difficult to design, even more difficult to make unique, and practically impossible to involve a compelling story. Driver: San Francisco dared to take on the monumental task of creating an innovative racing game in a city-sized landscape with a full story-based campaign. It pulled all of this off spectacularly.  San Francisco never had wider streets. I don’t say that lightly. I’ve played a good number of racing games, so I know that the number that even attempts to include a campaign is slim. And there are only so many twists that developers can put on “drive as fast as you can to the finish line”. But what Driver: San Francisco manages to pull off, even in the parts where it fails, is something that should be remembered.  Terrorizing driving instructors was definitely amusing. Players take control of John Tanner, a police officer in San Francisco, who has some sort of a personal stake in making sure a man named Jericho stays in prison. Unfortunately for him, Jericho breaks out in an extremely elaborate and daring move and escapes into the city. Tanner gets in a car accident, which puts him in a coma for most of the game.  It actually makes for a good explanation of the player's powers. The majority of the game consists of Tanner inside his own comatose head as he tries to stop Jericho and piece together the motivation behind Jericho’s actions. It’s too elaborate to sum up in a few paragraphs. The entire game is set to be a sort of Starsky and Hutch type drama, and is even set up to resemble a television show.  Or Turner and Hooch. The game gives the player the ability to “shift” into any vehicle in the city. This is absolutely great for allowing the player to jump into oncoming traffic and steer it into enemies, which ends up being the highlight of most of the missions. However, the unfortunate thing is that the actual racing events are extremely boring. It was more fun and much faster to shift into oncoming traffic and take out my opponents rather than race through an entire event. The only other problem is that there were almost too many events. I loved the campaign missions and some of the random side missions, but I dreaded the checkpoints, the normal races, and the smash events. They felt slow and restrictive. The open-world environment should have encouraged randomization, but these events discouraged it completely.  Not a particularly interesting event type. I loved the shifting, I loved the ability to cause serious crashes to take out my racing opponents, and I liked most of the story. This game is an interesting, refreshing breath of life in a tired genre. I’m hoping that any potential sequel will refine on what is here and make things even better.
The campaign took me around 7 hours total to beat, but I left many of the races and challenges unfinished. There is still plenty left to do, so most players could very easily get 10 hours of playtime or more out of the game. However, the unfortunately boring race events prevent this game from having serious replay value. There is a multiplayer mode to this game, but unfortunately it lacked a single opponent for me to race. This meant that I was completely unable to participate in online activities.
For the most part the game is a fairly standard racing game. A lot of the vehicles seemed to have trouble gaining traction, but it wasn’t a huge deal as long as I kept my moves small. But some of the time trials, especially those on the higher end of the difficulty spectrum, were near impossible. The problem was twofold. First, a lot of the faster cars had serious issues with traction, to the point where I could drift for 100 meters or more while trying desperately to stabilize. The second problem was the level of traffic. There were a ton of cars on the streets, each of which would sent my car into a death spiral if I so much as tapped them, especially at high speeds. Fortunately, you can avoid these races, and all of the campaign events are at a perfect difficulty level. 2. Parental Notices
Violence in this game is pretty mild. The most common form of violence is car crashes, which are extremely common. The player will be constantly put in situations that allow, or sometimes require, car crashes.  I hope you have insurance. Frequently these will involve head-on collisions. If the player uses a heavy vehicle such as a truck or bus, enough speed, or both, the player will total the other car. The sidewalks are often filled with pedestrians. The player can never actually hit any of them. If the player gets close, the pedestrians always move out of the way. If the player somehow manages to get in a position to actually drive through a pedestrian, the person simply goes right through the car.  Not a particularly interesting event type.
There were a number of missions and vehicles where the passenger would imply sexuality. It was never completely overt, but it was definitely understood. Like a female passenger saying something like “Remember, babe, no prize for second place!”
There are a number of campaign missions that involve police officers destroying fake medication and taking down the distributors. The meds are just in a few distinct crates that the player has to drive through to break. No one is ever seen using these substances.  Conveniently laid crates of fake meds. The main campaign involves a sinister plot to create a dirty bomb using sarin gas. The gas is a constant element in the campaign, but is never actually made.
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are some mods available that will reskin the cars, but there are no mature content mods available.
There are a few churches and other religious buildings present in the game. Other than this, religion is not a factor.  I didn't know the Notre Dame was in San Francisco.
Anti-law is an oddly high factor in this game. The player is a police officer, so the entire plot consists of him and his partner trying to catch a criminal who escaped from prison.  This guy. However, there are plenty of times when the player will be taking the body of and helping criminals. This includes helping people in illegal street races and escaping from police officers.  Why is it always police Corvettes? And why haven't I ever seen one in real life? Sometimes the player helping the criminals make sense, such as when he is trying to place a mole in the antagonist’s organization. He also helps two college students win enough money in racing to go to college. However, there are plenty of missions and events with no moral high ground for the player to claim.
There is a multiplayer mode to this game, but there wasn’t a single person playing online. I completed one of the tutorials, but couldn’t actually put my skills to the test. Therefore, online community is not a factor.
Considering this is a racing game, extreme sports is a constant factor. The player will be performing some extremely dangerous driving in heavy traffic. This will commonly involve drifting, driving well over 100 mph in heavy traffic, weaving through cars and across lanes, and driving in oncoming traffic.  I would love to see this little traffic on this large of a street in any major city. Collisions are extremely common and, in some missions and challenges, required. However, most of the time, the consequences for such dangerous crashes are minimized. The game’s plot revolves around a serious car crash that puts the main character in a coma, but health is completely absent for the rest of the game. The player is never hurt no matter how serious a crash he is in. Even if you drive a mini cooper-sized car 160 mph straight into an oncoming truck, the player will never be injured.  Pardon me! So sorry! There are a number of missions where the player has to drive his car underneath the bed of a truck in order to defuse bombs. A number of these trucks will be moving at speed on a busy freeway. These would be extremely dangerous to attempt in real life.  Be very, very careful. There are a number of places where the player can catch huge amounts of air. This is the least realistic driving element in the game.  Dodge this.
While the player is in a coma, he has the ability to magically take control of other drivers around the city. This is clearly presented as a somewhat magical ability, and is especially highlighted when the player floats out of his own body around the city. The main antagonist has the same ability.  Is this what birds see? Very late in the game the player can also use his powers to fling cars at the enemy. This is only used for a single segment, however.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Part of the campaign involves the main antagonist gathering the ingredients necessary to create a sarin gas bomb. The game simply says that if you take thousands of gallons of ammonia and mix it with platinum, you can make enough sarin gas to fill a football stadium. The player ends up stopping the plot in the comatose world, but the antagonist manages to steal both of these in the real world. The threat of the dirty bomb causes a total evacuation of downtown San Francisco. The antagonist ends up detonating what is believed to be a dirty bomb in downtown. It turns out to be a harmless smoke bomb, but the player doesn’t know this for sure until after it is detonated.  Looks like a normal day driving towards downtown L.A.
2 Comments
7/1/2013 01:31:54 pm
I'm not opposed to including language, but it can be difficult since games don't necessarily have a set script. I discuss the topic in the second section of the FAQs page. Leave a Reply. |
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