The original Driver was way ahead of its time, and was one of my absolute favorite games on the original PlayStation. Two years before Grand Theft Auto III revolutionized open-world gaming, Driver gave you a wide-open city (four, in fact) to just cruise around in as stuntman-turned-undercover officer John Tanner, picking up missions at will or just seeing how long you could evade the police. That seems old hat now, but in 1999 it was a revelation. It also had an incredible "Film Director" mode, that allowed you to record your car chases from different angles and even edit clips together. I don't remember seeing a feature like that on consoles again until Halo 3. Like I said, ahead of its time. Subsequent entries in the series didn't fare quite as well, aping the more complex GTA series with some ill-advised on-foot sequences, but the original still shines like a beacon in my memory.
Driver: San Francisco seeks to regain the glory days by putting the focus squarely back on the driving. The plot...is pretty out there, though. The game begins with Macho Man Randy Savage lookalike Charles Jericho-- apparently the main villain in the last game-- staging a (literally) explosive escape from an armored prison transport, which he summarily rams into Tanner's car. The game then abruptly switches back to Tanner's car, apparently healthy and whole, and Tanner eventually discovers he has the ability to "shift" out of his own body and take over the driver of any vehicle in the city. This, um, superpower is immediatly put to use as Tanner and his interracial bromance partner Tobias Jones start tracking down Jericho and unraveling his dastardly plot. Handily, this requires a lot of car chases and stunt driving, as well as cryptic messages from creepy, crow-infested billboards. Meanwhile, the game frequently flashes to Tanner's bruised and comatose body in a hospital, while Jones looks on from bedside in bromantic concern and reports of Jericho's misdeeds play over the news.
I'll be honest, I have no frakkin' clue what is going on here. I don't know if this is all a dream sequence, or if Tanner's disembodied mind is driving around Fog City in some kind of spirit car, or if we're in some alternate dimension or what. It's like as if Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch had sticky man-sex on the set of Bullitt. You're welcome for that mental image, by the way. It's a crazy, absurd concept, but the game takes it and runs with it, and never, ever looks back. The developers werer clearly reveling in the craziness of it all, and it's hard not to get swept up in their enthusiasm.
What I can tell you is that I'm having a ridiculous amount of fun driving around San Francisco, possessing drivers and taking missions, and driving my (possibly spectral) Dodge Challenger off sweet jumps all over the city. The shifting mechanic may seem weird at first, but the beauty of it is that it allows you to switch cars instantly, which makes for some very interesting gameplay. Say you're chasing someone down and you wreck your car. No problem! Just switch to another car and you're still right on his tail. Still getting away from you? Shift into oncoming traffic and ram him head-on, or park a bus across his path and watch the windshield fragments fly.
The Driver series had been treading down the treacherous path of becoming just another GTA clone, and a poorly implemented one at that. I'm glad that with San Francisco, they opted for a much more focused experience. The driving is tight, responsive, and kinetic. Cars handle well and feel heavy and powerful. Slamming into oncoming traffic and chasing down bad dudes just feels great. There is plenty to do between the main story missions and side activities, but each activity only takes a few minutes to complete, making it a perfect pick-up-and-play game. You can buy vehicles (all modeled after real cars, current and historical) and upgrade your powers, but this is purely optional. I've only bought a couple ability upgrades, and I don't even feel these were necessary-- so you won't be grinding to level up.
All in all, I think this is a great game, especially since I picked it up for $10. Like Bulletstorm, it revels in just being a game and delivering you a really good time. Well worth playing.
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