Driver: San Francisco (Wii) takes the franchise's signature car chases and puts them in a unique package. Its core concept of "shifting" between cars on the fly offers surprisingly strategic depth and frantic action. While the Wii version suffers from downgraded visuals and occasionally awkward motion controls, the cel-shaded art style maintains a certain charm. The story mode is cheesy yet entertaining, and the wealth of side missions and challenges offers plenty of gameplay variety to keep things interesting.
Why are there so few driving games with compelling stories, or any story to speak of? I was hungry for a fun-first driving game and kept looking for one with a decent single-player campaign or story mode. Finally decided to revisit Driver SF and play it properly (played it twice in the past but fell off after a few chapters). For those unfamiliar with the game, it’s an open-world driving game where you can always shift from one car to another using “coma powers” (explained in the story) and use said cars to, for instance, crash into cops or opponents during a race. It’s a totally unique driving game, which could’ve been an all-time great game but is held back by a couple of things in my view.
My main problem with Driver SF is that I didn’t find the driving to be all that fun. I wish it was just a tad more forgiving, because I would really struggle to control certain vehicles or just slide out all over the place. I did get used to it to some extent, but in certain missions or vehicles, I still found myself wishing it was just ever-so-slightly more arcadey. Kinda felt like the game was stopping me from having fun by having to fight the handling so much.
My other problem with the game was that I didn’t find the cop chases to be all that fun, for a variety of reasons, I just felt like I had to luck my way through many of them cause I just couldn’ shake the cops in a fun or efficient way.
This changed significantly after (too) many hours with the game when I discovered mods for it. My mistake for not looking earlier, cause I kept thinking “man this game could be amazing, if you tweaked this and that”. There are 2 important mods that greatly increased my enjoyment with the game, one that redoes cops chases and one that adds a LOT of features but most importantly, a better 3rd person camera (the default one is too close to the car for my taste). I still don’t love the driving handling, but now at latest the cop chases did feel a LOT better to play, and generally chaotic in a more fun way, rather than just being frustrated that they don’t seem to play by the same rules that I have to as the player (something I felt happens often with other cars in this game).
If I had one more nitpick with the game, it’s how the dialogue system works. You can shift into any car, and if there’s a passenger, there’s a ton of skits that are written between different pairs of characters, outside of the side-missions. This is just stuff in-world that is there just for flavor but I found that in MOST situations, the only way to hear that stuff is to jump into cars outside of missions and maybe do a cops chase. If I ever engaged in a race or activity, the passenger dialogue would disappear. Or during other missions or events, I would jump to other cars quickly, get to hear half of a line of dialogue because I crash that car into an opponent and then I jump out. I wish they had found a way to more intelligently integrate this flavor dialogue into the side activities that have no story, which from my experience often couldn’t be combined with character dialogue from random cars. Just feels like they spent a LOT of time to write and record ALL of that dialogue (there’s a LOT of it), but most people won’t hear it unless they choose to fuck around the city without doing any side stuff, which i did many times just to hear some more of the conversations (also worth mentioning that some of the character stereotypes they use haven’t aged super well).
All this being said, I cannot overstate how insane and unique this game is. It has to be hands-down the best story in a driving game (not counting games with on-foot gameplay, or stuff that is Great it’s it’s own special way, like NFS Most Wanted). Sure it’s nothing mind-blowing, but as a wrapper for the gameplay experience, it’s incredibly compelling and well-executed. The style overall is very funky (Life on Mars inspired i’ve read), structured like a TV show, with nice cinematic recaps between chapters and a great old-school soundtrack that i very much enjoyed driving to. When everything works, and you’re jumping to random cars, crashing into opponents, it can be thrilling and like no other game. The mods really really elevate the experience, because there’s an even better game buried within this ambitious project. Maybe they needed more time, maybe a sequel would’ve nailed it, but as is, Driver San Francisco is an amazing game, for it’s ambition and uniqueness if nothing else, with some rough spots that hold it back from reaching it’s true potential. Mods help a lot, but I still wish we’d see Reflections or other developers try to chase this further.
My main problem with Driver SF is that I didn’t find the driving to be all that fun. I wish it was just a tad more forgiving, because I would really struggle to control certain vehicles or just slide out all over the place. I did get used to it to some extent, but in certain missions or vehicles, I still found myself wishing it was just ever-so-slightly more arcadey. Kinda felt like the game was stopping me from having fun by having to fight the handling so much.
My other problem with the game was that I didn’t find the cop chases to be all that fun, for a variety of reasons, I just felt like I had to luck my way through many of them cause I just couldn’ shake the cops in a fun or efficient way.
This changed significantly after (too) many hours with the game when I discovered mods for it. My mistake for not looking earlier, cause I kept thinking “man this game could be amazing, if you tweaked this and that”. There are 2 important mods that greatly increased my enjoyment with the game, one that redoes cops chases and one that adds a LOT of features but most importantly, a better 3rd person camera (the default one is too close to the car for my taste). I still don’t love the driving handling, but now at latest the cop chases did feel a LOT better to play, and generally chaotic in a more fun way, rather than just being frustrated that they don’t seem to play by the same rules that I have to as the player (something I felt happens often with other cars in this game).
If I had one more nitpick with the game, it’s how the dialogue system works. You can shift into any car, and if there’s a passenger, there’s a ton of skits that are written between different pairs of characters, outside of the side-missions. This is just stuff in-world that is there just for flavor but I found that in MOST situations, the only way to hear that stuff is to jump into cars outside of missions and maybe do a cops chase. If I ever engaged in a race or activity, the passenger dialogue would disappear. Or during other missions or events, I would jump to other cars quickly, get to hear half of a line of dialogue because I crash that car into an opponent and then I jump out. I wish they had found a way to more intelligently integrate this flavor dialogue into the side activities that have no story, which from my experience often couldn’t be combined with character dialogue from random cars. Just feels like they spent a LOT of time to write and record ALL of that dialogue (there’s a LOT of it), but most people won’t hear it unless they choose to fuck around the city without doing any side stuff, which i did many times just to hear some more of the conversations (also worth mentioning that some of the character stereotypes they use haven’t aged super well).
All this being said, I cannot overstate how insane and unique this game is. It has to be hands-down the best story in a driving game (not counting games with on-foot gameplay, or stuff that is Great it’s it’s own special way, like NFS Most Wanted). Sure it’s nothing mind-blowing, but as a wrapper for the gameplay experience, it’s incredibly compelling and well-executed. The style overall is very funky (Life on Mars inspired i’ve read), structured like a TV show, with nice cinematic recaps between chapters and a great old-school soundtrack that i very much enjoyed driving to. When everything works, and you’re jumping to random cars, crashing into opponents, it can be thrilling and like no other game. The mods really really elevate the experience, because there’s an even better game buried within this ambitious project. Maybe they needed more time, maybe a sequel would’ve nailed it, but as is, Driver San Francisco is an amazing game, for it’s ambition and uniqueness if nothing else, with some rough spots that hold it back from reaching it’s true potential. Mods help a lot, but I still wish we’d see Reflections or other developers try to chase this further.
Ta wapo
a good childhood memory, still remember the ending