BitSnark

Due this Holiday season on Wii, PC, 360 & PS3, Ubisoft has unveiled the next entry in the Driver series of games; Driver: San-Francisco.

Story-wise the game takes place some twelve months after the events seen in Driv3r (are we still admitting that piece of shit exists?), with the Detective Tanner taking on arch-enemy Jericho.

Gameplay-wise it’s business as usual really, you chase down perps using any means available to you and you can still get out of your car and interact as you could do in the previous two titles in the series. Even though the game is supposedly new, it already looks tired, boasting very little you can’t do as a side mission in the much more grandiose GTA IV.

The one (somewhat implausible) ace it does have up it’s sleeve is the ‘Shift’ mechanic, which basically allows you to ‘jump’ from one car to the next, kinda like motor possession or something. If that sounds retarded, just wait until you hear the narrative justification for it.

After having a crash which put him into a coma he didn’t realise(!), Tanner apparently gains a new kind of power which allows him to shift (wink) his spirit from one car to the next. So for example, if you find yourself spinning out uncontrollably after a crash, you can use shift to switch to an overhead view and pick the nearest car for you to shift into.

In desperately trying to make itself stand out somehow, anyhow, from the GTA IV crowd, it seems all that has been achieved, at least on the evidence of Ubisoft’s presentation is that the fundamentals have once again been so cruelly undercooked and neglected.

There are under six months until the game gets it’s release, I don’t see much changing between now and then.

For you curious folk, there is a link below to the Driver: SF demonstration that Ubisoft put on last night: