Driver: San Francisco Preview - E3 2010
E3 2010: Getting behind the wheel with the newest attempt to reboot a classic franchise
Driver is a classic franchise that saw players take on the role of a cop that’s excellent at catching criminals in his old school muscle car. However, some sequels later, the legacy of the series faded and eventually dropped off the radar. At this year’s E3, Ubisoft has announced that they are bringing back the franchise, with a reboot title Driver: San Francisco. The game takes place a few months after the events of Driv3r. After a car crash while pursuing, Tanner – the main character - is taken to a hospital in a coma. The rest of the game takes place inside Tanner’s coma dream, which allows the developers to introduce some neat elements.
The essence is that Driver is going back to its roots. It’s all about muscle cars, big chases, and the game isn’t simply an HD remake of the original. The demo that was shown at E3 ran on PS3, and locked at a smooth 60fps. There was a lot of street traffic, consisting licensed cars for the first time in the franchise history. The game has an advanced physics and damage model, though that is still work in progress.
The main focus of the game will be the Shift ability. Since the main character is in a coma, the developers are able to introduce menu-style elements to the game without removing the player from the realistic experience. Basically, Shift allows players to zoom out to bird’s eye view (and higher) and select any vehicle, instantly appearing behind the wheel. This ability can be used to not only fast travel, but also take out bad guys and setup some crazy head-on collisions. The traffic flow doesn’t pause in Shift mode, so the player must decide quickly which vehicle to jump to. As the game progresses, players will be able to zoom out further back until they can see the whole city and jump quickly from one end to the other.
There is over 200 miles of road in the game, far more than the previous titles. The Shift ability is used passively as well to start mission quests and research information from various driver characters in the game. In an example chase mission, two cops were attempting to catch a bad guy. Shifting into one of the cop cars, the chase took a turn for the worst when the car crashed – but using Rapid Shift ability, the player instantly moved to the other cop car and resumed the chase. To end the dangerous driving, we Shifted to a truck in the oncoming lane and smashed the perpetrator head-on.
After the demo, we had an opportunity to try the game live. The controls felt a bit drifty, and that was already noted as an emphasis for the development team. While not overly simulated, there was a definite learning curve to get the car under control. We were playing a somewhat generic chase mission, following the tail lights of an escaping convict. After taking a few chances with red lights, we felt that the chase has gone on for too long. So without much delay, we used Shift to get behind the wheel of an oncoming truck and veered onto the path of the convict. Though we didn’t disable the vehicle completely, it gave us a significant advantage - Shifting back to our own car, we were able to catch up and smash the enemy, forcing them into a dead end ally and ending the escape.
Driver is an ambitious title that looks to bring back the glory days and highly regarded status of the original game. From our time at the presentation, and consequent hands-on, the game looks to be coming along very well and has definitely retained the style and feel of the classic. There will be a full assortment of multiplayer modes, though details were not discussed – except that the Shift ability can be used in MP, which sounds very intriguing. Though the 5th game in the series, this is the first title on the modern generation of platforms, which means that fans can expect slick visuals, polish, and improved gameplay mechanics. Here’s to hoping that this reboot is a successful one, as that could spell a very bright looking future for the franchise. Driver: San Francisco is expected to arrive this year on MAC, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.
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