Driver: San Francisco

You are John Tanner. A cop trying to finish a job that he started a long time ago. Your mission. To make sure Jericho goes down once and for all. It all goes wrong though. Big time. You are out in a come and have to fight your way out of it thinking you are in real life.
The main feature of this game is the 'Shift' ability. It gives you the ability to fly above everyone else and take your pick of any car that you want and drive it. It works very well and with some of the challenges that the game throws at you during the 24 hour single player. Admittedly, most of those 24 hours were me doing every single challenge, dare, activity and collecting all of the movie tokens (collectibles).
There is a lot to do in Driver. You have about 30 main story missions, 50 activities, 80 dares, and 33 challenges in which 13 of them are unlocked by collecting the 130 movie tokens scattered throughout the city. On top of that there is also the multiplayer in which there is 11 game modes and freedrive.
As well as the ‘Shift’ ability you can boost. To use boost you must have some of your ability bar with at least some of it filled up. You can extend the bar by purchasing upgrades with the currency that you earn from completing missions or by messing around in free roam. Anything can earn you currency, drifting, jumping, boosting, spinning, etc. The currency you earn is called Willpower.
Driver’s gameplay is very good. The way that if you are in a big oil tanker it feels heavy to drive and turn, it doesn’t jump as high as any other vehicle would at that speed, for example. If you jump a Ford GT at 90MPH then it will still take off but not that much but if you do the same with an oil tanker then it will just go over the jump and fall back down. The best feature though would have to be the in-car view. The best EVER in a game. Even better than the camera in the NFS Shift games. The way that when you go to do a handbrake turn Tanner’s hand goes down to reach for the handbrake and doesn’t come back up until about a second after you release either the button (B or the Circle button depending which console you play it on.) The way he feeds the steering wheel through his hands as he turns and not the same as any other game where your character turns it slightly and the car shoots off in a direction. What makes this even better is that all of the cars that you drive throughout the course of the game are all fully licensed so there are no made up names or sounds.
Your Driver: San Francisco experience is made even better by Reflection Ubisoft’s hard work of making the single player experience run at 60 FPS. This works perfectly. The enjoyment of having great gameplay, visuals, sound and having fun makes this game one of the best.

Now the multiplayer. You have 11 game modes. Tag – The classic tag game but in reverse and with cars. First person to score 100 points wins. Trailblazer – There is one car that you have to follow behind in which there is trails that you have follow behind to score points. Again, you have to score 100 points to win. Classic Race – It is kind of obvious isn’t it? You race 3 laps against everyone else in the same car as you with no shifting ability or boost. Sprint GP – You take part in 5 different very short races in which the person with the most points wins at the end. Takedown – One person is a getaway driver, the rest are cops. The getaway needs to deliver a package to four different drop off points and the cops have to stop the getaway from making all four of the drop offs. The cops can shift and boost but the getaway can only boost. Every person gets a chance to be a getaway driver until everyone has the game will not end. Capture the Flag – One of the team based game modes. Not actually played this game mode yet but from what I have seen of it you and your team have to capture as many flags as you can just like in any other game. Blitz – Not played this either but it seems to be that you have to defend a base from the other team. Shift Race – You must pass through every checkpoint but you can shift between all of them to make the race faster although sometimes it is faster to just drive. 3 laps of a circuit and first to cross the line wins (obviously). I can’t remember the rest of them off of the top of my head but there are some more as well.

At the beginning of every race you have to do qualifying. You either do Jump, Drift, Speed or Smash qualifying to determine what place you start off in at the start of the race but sometimes the front isn’t always the best place to start. Along with the qualifying you also have some new abilities that you can use but only in certain game modes. These are Swap – you are able to swap the car you are in for any unlocked car that can be unlocked by levelling up. Spawn – Spawn any car you want if you are in need for a car but no car is near by to shift into. Impulse – Cause any car that you target to spin out of control.
Overall, there isn’t much that is wrong with Driver. Maybe some of the challenges can be repetitive but there is only so much that Reflections could do with ideas.

I would have to give Driver: San Francisco a 9/10.