Game Review: Driver: San Francisco

Billy O'Keefe - Mclatchy -Tribune News Service

Reviewed for: Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, also available for: Windows PC, Wii

From: Ubisoft Reflections/Ubisoft

ESRB rating: Teen (drug reference, language, sexual themes, violence)

Price: $60

At long last, the formerly-great "Driver" series can lay claim to being formerly washed up. "Driver: San Francisco" is polished, pretty and loaded with a kitchen sink's worth of arcade racing mission and mode types. It's also guided by a storyline that, without breaking series continuity, is completely crazy in an wholly, startlingly beneficial way.

The prologue shows all, but here's the gist: You, as series mainstay John Tanner, are in a coma. But your comatose state gives you a wild ability to not only observe San Franciscans' activity from a bird's-eye view, but "shift" into any driver on the road and assume control over his or her body (and, by extension, vehicle).

"D:SF's" appetite for polished interfaces makes this shifting mechanic a breeze to use: One button press shifts out of body and atop a living city map, and shifting into another body is as simple as highlighting a vehicle and pressing the same button. The game's prioritization of fun over everything else means that, outside of special challenges in which you must succeed on driving talent alone, you can shift whenever, however and as often as you please.

Immediately, shifting is fun because it allows you to drive all kinds of vehicles (licensed cars, tow trucks, semis and everything in between) and jump into the minds of numerous trivial and important side characters. ("D:SF's" storyline, presented somewhat like a weekly police drama, utilizes good character development, great voice acting and surprisingly sharp humor to tame the implausibility monster it creates, and the clever writing trickles down to even the most idle of chatter between the most trivial of characters.)

At some point, though, you'll unwittingly stumble into something that brings the shift mechanic's true potential into full light. It might be in the body of a cop forced to take down four street racers alone - a task made much easier if you quickly shift into oncoming traffic to create a roadblock before shifting back to finish the takedown. Perhaps it'll be during a team race, where you must quick-shift between two cars in the same race in order to place them first and second. You can always use raw driving skill to complete challenges the hard way, but "D:SF's" scope, interface and total allowance for player ingenuity creates a confluence of racing and real-time strategy that's too much fun to ignore.

It helps immensely that the game's other facets also carry their weight. "D:SF" looks terrific, and its vehicles finds a great balance between weighty and arcadey handling controls. More than 100 vehicles are on offer, and with some exceptions, you're free to complete a myriad of mission types - stunt challenges, arrest/getaway missions, checkpoint/open-ended races, tailing/escort missions and more - with whatever ride you like. Fleeing four police cruisers in a bus is a fool's errand, but "D:SF" won't mind if you try. And because just about everything you do (even when failing missions) earns you experience points toward the purchase of new cars and upgrades, you're never really penalized for trying something ridiculous.

"D:SF" nicely migrates most of its finer points to the online (eight players) and local (two) multiplayer side. Traditional races are available, but other modes - tag and co-op cop/criminal chases, to name two - take advantage of the open-ended map. Unless you opt for a pure race, the shift mechanic is fully in play for all players at once, and the ensuing chaos doesn't break the game like you might guess it would. Should you unlock every last reward in the solo campaign, a separate experience points and rewards track awaits on the multiplayer side.

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Copyright 2012 by Mclatchy -Tribune News Service