Mog's Impression: Driver: San Francisco Demo

The Driver series has been around for quite some time now, 12 years to be exact. Honestly, I played the crap out of the first Driver game and never really looked into any of the later games. It wasn’t until today I found out that Driver: San Francisco was released in demo form that I would dive right back into the Driver series and give the series another go.

Watch some Gameplay Footage of Driver: San Francisco

Driver: San Francisco is not really San Francisco Rush but it does feel like it at times. All these interesting mechanics that I’m sure were introduced with this new title, though numerous and daunting, did bring a familiar flavor that Driver did back in the old Playstation days. You apparently are still playing as Tanner but something bad happened to him and now he is in a coma. You are playing Tanner in his dreams and apparently Tanner has the ability to “shift” to another driver and take complete control of him.

Sounds like a mind-stealing rapist.

The demo for Driver: San Francisco gives you three different mission scenarios, one of them acts as an introduction to Tanner’s new found powers. Driver was originally in a mission based format and it shows here. There are some interesting gameplay mechanics thrown in, specifically the whole shift thing. In Driver: San Francisco, you can transfer Tanner’s mind to another car’s driver and take control of that car. Which is cool considering that you don’t have to run out of your car like Grand Theft Auto or the huge array of similar games out there. You also have boost which pretty much functions like a lower-end boost compared to Burnout. Of course, this game does strive for some level of realism… I guess.

The game runs at a solid 60 frames per second, with cutscenes at 30. Much like the original Driver (and I assume the other Driver games), it tries to keep the whole 50′s-60′s TV/Movie police show feel to it. The driving and the feel of driving is much more arcade like. The best thing I can compare it to is a much calmer and stricter Burnout game. The boost really makes you feel like you’re going ridiculously fast but you can’t drift like you’re on ice. What was really impressive, though, was just the range on how far you can shift. You can zoom the camera back all the way up to the point where it’s much like a satellite view and pick any point in the city where you want to nab a car. The game also does not pause but rather slows down when you’re in the process of picking what car to shift.

The presentation is definitely not as grim as say LA Noire but, again, maintaining that 50′s-60′s feel really helps make the story end much more entertaining. Tanner converses with random people that he encounters when he shifts around through cars and I feel that it’s going the extra mile just to entertain the player even more.

I think this game is gonna turn out to be a great title and while I can’t speak for any other game in the series, I definitely loved the first Driver game and something about it just made it that much more different from the Need for Speed series. I would definitely love to pick this game up once it comes out early September and there’s also a multiplayer aspect too, which will be released as a demo next week. Definitely gonna check it all out.

MogKnight

Hanh "MogKnight" Nguyen is owner and Editor-in-Chief of The Mog Blog. A fan of pushing buttons and making things happen. He has recently been seen going around random GameStops to slowly rebuild his Dynasty Warriors collection.