Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, Ubisoft, cert: 12, out now
The very first iteration of Driver in 1999 changed the way the genre was played. No longer confined to a track, nor simply a means of getting to the next checkpoint or mission à la GTA – the mission was the driving. Aside from the funky 60s Bullitt styling and soundtrack, Driver's real joy was the car handling, with bouncy suspension, smoking burnouts and screeching drifts. Not that it wasn't without its faults, with a linear storyline and samey missions revealing a lack of depth. Fortunately, though, after some pretty awful sequels, Driver: San Francisco is truly worthy of the series.
This time around, our hero cop, Tanner, has acquired a strange new ability while in a coma after a car crash, enabling him to "shift" out of his body and "become" any other driver on the road. Think Quantum Leap meets Starsky & Hutch, but with worse acting. The premise is daft, even within the confines of a video game, but it does allow freedom to move around the vast virtual city and choose a path through the story rather than blindly following a linear plot.
For instance, after being led through setpieces to learn the controls, you can shift at any time, taking on mini games such as becoming an ambulance driver rushing patients to hospital or a taxi driver. The trick also works within missions – high-speed chases, for example – into faster cars or to create diversions.
As with the original, it's the car handling that brings the game to life, responsive controls allow weaving through traffic or spinning doughnuts to escape trouble. There are also plenty of glistening vehicles, each with their own attributes. The Ford Shelby GT has the grunt but feels heavy compared with the powerful but grippy Nissan 370Z and both are a world apart from the 4x4s available for off-road challenges, along with trucks, buses and other vehicles all clogging up the roads.
Being limited to four wheels in single-player can feel a tad repetitive by the end, but there is longevity in the excellent multiplayer options, such as tag and trailblazer, the latter earning players points for following in a lead car's slipstream – a nice idea. There are occasional skippy graphics in split-screen but it's a minor niggle in what is an accomplished title that rekindles the enthusiasm gamers felt for the original.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/04/driver-san-francisco-xbox-ps3
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