Driver: San Francisco

The Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Chinatown - San Francisco is as epic a tourist destination as any. It even features the Guinness World Record-breaking Bendiest Road in the World. Surely it's the best possible setting for a driving game.

You'd think so, but the Frisco-based Driver games have never really made a mark since the first one hit shelves way back in 1999. Can this latest Java-based addition to the series buck the trend?

Crooked

In Driver: San Francisco you take the wheel as Tanner, a hard-boiled copper just trying to do the right thing. That right thing turns out to be motoring around San Francisco catching crooks, winning street races, and earning the moolah to buy new cars.

Gameplay in the Story mode is split up into missions, separated by comic book cut-scenes that you'll gratefully skip.

The story isn't so much a potent Ferrari full of sweeping emotional drive, twists, and turns as it is a Robin Reliant, trundling reliably along without winning any accolades for its power.

During missions you'll pick up cash by pulling off drifty turns, achieving epic jumps, and picking up the shiny stuff straight off the street.

You can use this cash to purchase new vehicles for the game's Free mode, in which you're not tied down by missions and have free rein of the city.

There are boost packs littering the roads of 'Frisco too, which are activated by tapping the '5' key. Any accidental fender benders can be remedied almost immediately should you utilise this feature.

U-seless turn

The city itself isn't particularly reminiscent of The City by the Bay, but the graphics are on par with the likes of Fast Five.

The cars look good, too, and animations for turning, drifting, and boosting have a certain graphic novel-esque feel to them which is hard not too enjoy.

The keypad controls are fairly solid, though it's easy to take a wrong turn due to the dodgy auto-turning feature which kicks-in near junctions. Thankfully, a simple tap of the '0' key enables you to perform an automated U-turn.

Ultimately, though, due to its automated turning systems, automated acceleration mechanic, and a general lack of mission variety, Driver: San Francisco feels too much like a ride in the back of a taxi, rather than an action-packed race for justice.

Driver: San Francisco

While it doesn’t look half bad and the foundations are there for some solid driving gameplay, dodgy automated steering mechanics occasionally cast a shadow over the latest - good but not ground-breaking - entry in the Driver franchise
Score
Matt Sakuraoka-Gilman
Matt Sakuraoka-Gilman
When Matt was 7 years old he didn't write to Santa like the other little boys and girls. He wrote to Mario. When the rotund plumber replied, Matt's dedication to a life of gaming was established. Like an otaku David Carradine, he wandered the planet until becoming a writer at Pocket Gamer.