Driver: San Francisco Review

Driver: San Francisco was Ubisoft’s answer to open world racing in 2011. At the time, Test Drive Unlimited 2 held a monopoly in its niche. Given Driver’s history of mostly mediocre titles, San Francisco came completely out of left field.

Eight years later, open world racing games aren’t doing so hot. Test Drive is nowhere to be seen, The Crew has largely disappointed, and Forza Horizon, while good, hasn’t changed much in years.

We’ve been blessed with some great racing games through the years, but none are as surprising as Driver: San Francisco. One of the best open world racers of its time, you can bet the game has aged remarkably well.

The Shift mechanic

The primary gameplay mechanic that helps Driver differentiate itself from its competitors is Shift. Protagonist John Tanner finds himself in a deep coma, suffered after mob gangster Jericho crashes him into oncoming traffic. Tanner doesn’t realize straight away that he’s in a dream, but he does discover a certain superpower he’s picked up.

In San Francisco, you can Shift into any vehicle in the world in order to help make missions easier to complete.

Chasing some street racers and need to take them out quickly? Jump into an oncoming semi-truck and give them a taste of colliding with a 40-ton eighteen-wheeler.

Amid an epic race but a few yards short of beating that Lamborghini ahead of you? Try diverting the traffic a little to make your opponent’s finish less trivial.

This mechanic drives the difficulty behind missions and events as you locate suitable vehicles for different purposes. However, while fun, Shift itself might be too strong and not at all well-balanced. Most missions aren’t hard to complete because Tanner’s ability to shift allows him to do almost anything. Since this world is his dream, it’s not an exaggeration to say he is practically godlike within it.

The only time I struggled with missions was when they involved frustratingly artificial difficulty. Nasty rubber-banding during races and overly-aggressive police spawn rates make it feel like my actions aren’t important at times.

Rubber banding always ruins any form of racing as it means only the last 10 percent of a race matters. Everything before that is just a case of keeping with the pack.

As for the police, the way they only ram you and ignore opponents can get irritating quick. Other racers zoom away in their expensive sports car while you have five police Corvettes smacking you up left and right.