After what feels like a very long break driver is back and now that it’s focused on what made the original game great it’s feeling better than ever. The “return to the series’ grass roots” idea behind the game has certainly helped put the fun back into the car handling. Of all the changes in the series the biggest gamble would have to be the new shift system allowing you to leave your body to look down on the city from above and pick another car to shift into.



At first shift sounds like a bad idea however after using it a couple of times you get to see the full potential of the ability and it truly is a stroke of genius. Shift helps keep the game play fast and fluid throughout in a way that no other driving game can and has certainly changed the way you approach missions and races. It’s so refreshing to see a developer take a chance when they could have just used the generic get out and steal another car mechanic used by every other game in the genre.



The story is very different and coming from such a unique angle is handled very well with quite a good sense of humour even the characters have a hard time grasping what's going on at times which adds to the fun and there's usually some decent banter between Tanner and passengers he Shifts next to when car hopping. While the main storyline seems relatively short there are plenty of other optional events like challenges, activities, dares, and felony missions to carry out, as well as 120 collectibles to find which can be used to fully flesh out the single player experience and thankfully these can be easily accessed from shift vision so you don’t have to drive half way across the map to find the next mission. The only slightly negative experience I have had with the single player side of the game is that some of the dialogue is badly recorded however it’s not bad enough to spoil the immersion.



By far the stand out section of this game is the multiplayer with so many modes to play it leaves you spoilt for choice. As you would expect you have the normal style of races made up of longer 2 lap races and sprint series made up of 5 shorter races these have shift disabled however there are also races where shift is the order of the day. Tag which sees you trying to touch the car that currently has the tag in order to steal it from them as the player holding the tag earns points. And trailblazer where you need to follow in the trail of an AI controlled DeLorean to earn points. And that is just a sample there are 15 other modes to discover. The multiplayer also contains new shift abilities that you unlock as you rank up and these can be very useful at times such as the swap ability where once the ability meter is charged up you can swap whatever car you are in for a car you have pre selected from any of the cars you have unlocked by ranking up.



The achievements in Driver: San Francisco are all relatively straightforward and have the usual suspects such as complete a chapter of the story and complete the story itself. There’s also the usual grindy sort of achievements such as complete all side missions and find all collectables however most of the side missions are good fun anyway and the collectables are marked out on the map once you have driven within range of them so both are fairly easy. There are a large number of online achievements and these are made up of ones for ranking up which is somewhat quick and painless and the rest are there simply to get you playing all the modes and are also made quite easy as they are things like “Place in the top 3 in Classic Race 10 times” which should make this a relatively easy and fun 1000 for most gamers.



Summary
The spirit of the original Driver returns to the series at last giving this game a very unique feel compared to all the other driving games out there. Combine that with the new features such as all the licensed cars, the new shift feature which I’m pleased to say makes rather than breaks this game and without doubt the best set of online multiplayer modes featured in a driving game. Easily one of the most fun arcade sandbox style driving games out there.

Scores

Visuals 9
Sound 7
Single player 9
Multiplayer 10
Achievements 8
Total 8.6