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(A Driver San Francisco review)
This could have gone wrong in so many ways, yet it avoids nearly all of them. I like to think Reflections released Driver San Francisco under Ubisoft’s corporate moustache, but the withered lizards that lord over the industry aren’t easilly fooled. Regardless, it’s one of the forgotten titles of 2011, another victim of Top Ten lists and quaint notions of entitlement by the series’ “fans”, some of which, matter-of-factly, believe Driv3r was not a crime against mankind.
Trauma, in Driver San Francisco, kicks off a different approach to detective fiction. John Tanner, asphalt cop, suffers a car crash at the hands of his eternal rival, Charles Jericho, and is left in a coma. Since the first minutes establish that Tanner is in a hospital bed, the game isn’t about figuring out how he got there, but how he will recover from it. The answer, which might have imploded the brains of executives and marketing teams at Ubisoft, manifests in a fondness for 1970′s cop shows, detective work and magical realism.
It’s also Quantum Leap in Lamborghinis.
From the start, the game makes it clear nothing is “real”; that what we see is Tanner operating within his subconscious. As such, his way of making sense of it all is to “reboot” the world and himself: his newfound astral projection, for instance, becomes as natural as gravity. This ties neatly with the gameplay, as he gains the ability to oversee San Francisco and to “shift”, thereby posessing any person driving around the city. Projecting Tanner’s mind in search of other drivers – therefore, other cars to drive – is not only a great play mechanic, it also makes gameplay correspond to the story. Unlike, say, Uncharted, where the story is about Nathan Drake as a roguish hero with a heart of gold, but the game is about waging all out war against various ethnic groups so that Drake can be left alone long enough to climb stuff, Driver San Francisco is the kind of game that understands its conventions and limitations, and both the story and gameplay actually complement, rather than exclude each other.
Shifting is the highlight of the game: with only one button press, players are thrown out of their current car and dropped slightly above the motorized flux of the city, free to choose any other ride. Is your taxi not sturdy enough? Possess that Hummer’s driver. Are criminals going too fast for you? Jump into that Lamborghini. Need to stop someone? Control that tanker truck and make it swerve on the highway. A concept that avoids bringing Driver from the ashes as a subpar Grand Theft Auto clone, yes, but one that develops Tanner as a character; more than any other Driver title to date, the race car driver turned undercover cop turned detective is free to create his own mythology. There’s never a civilian death caused by reckless driving, as people always dodge in the nick of time. No challenge is too difficult, no driver is too fast, no chase is too frantic for Tanner. It’s all a fantasy, sure, but it’s his fantasy. It’s the watch-out-world-here-comes-John-Tanner version of the character, and the game is all the better for it.
This also segues into how the game applies the role of the classic detective, often geographically and psychologically secluded, to Tanner’s condition. Not only is he anchored to the city (much like a crime scene) but to his mind as well (a map where he can follow clues, reconstruct events, solve the puzzle). To help himself, however, he needs to help the city. At times, this takes on a mystical quality – the outdoors that command Tanner to take action, the game telling you to “help” the people of San Francisco, the recurring presence of crows as harbingers of death and release – but it’s all the work of his mind so to help the city is to help himself. Nonetheless, it’s curious to note that Tanner is less a force of good than a force of balance. While several missions require him to operate on the side of the law, others take the opposite route. Maybe the dumb kids who blew their college funds in illegal races know something about Jericho. Maybe the redneck who was duped and is now chased by the police will help Tanner get closer to his goal. Maybe he’ll get lucky if he helps those cops apreehend stolen vehicules. People come and go, with dialogues ranging from insults to jokes, from spirituality to internet acronyms – while not memorable, they’re all sharp and impeccable.
Gradually, Tanner’s mental blocks, depicted as physical barriers on the map, dissolve and allow him to explore the rest of the city. New abilities are received, from ramming cars to turbos, and as he gains a better understanding of things, his vision of the city grows. This takes on the form of a real-time strategic map, where San Francisco is seen from high above, and missions await Tanner’s intervention. It’s not just the map that gives it a quasi-RTS feel; some missions require good judgement and quick reflexes to protect targets unable to move. In a mad rush to protect parked cars or vans, players hop along traffic trying to find the right cars to sacrifice against suicidal drivers – much like sacrificing your units against a well planned Zerg rush.
Some elements, however, are uneven. Every mission, and every stunt performed during and between them, rewards players with Willpower, a virtual currency used to purchase new vehicules and improve abilities. While it’s suggested that accumulated willpower gives Tanner the strength to leave his hospital bed, it’s mostly about buying stuff that could have been trimmed down, with garbage trucks and buggies becoming more of a Pokémon compulsion than a worthwhile pursuit. Some times, Reflections just lets the delirious set in, asking players to disarm bombs under tanker trucks spread out across the city or that they go crazy behind the wheel to increase either Tanner or a passenger’s heart rate; other times, they fall into standard obstacle courses or generic rampages.
Fortunately, the main story missions outclass everything else and, given the themes of reality versus dream, offer the best moments in the game. Right after the car crash that sets the story, Tanner finds himself in the body of an ambulance driver – the same ambulance that’s rushing Tanner’s body to the hospital. Things only get weirder from then on out. The conflict between Tanner and the imagined Jericho takes on new heights when Tanner realizes why his rival is always one step ahead; of course, his psyche conjured the ultimate boogeyman, an adversary capable of doing everything Tanner can. One of the craziest moments sees Tanner possess an informant who’s told to follow a target, and finds himself tailing his own car. But who’s behind the wheel of his Dodge Challenger, sitting next to his partner? It’s the kind of “oh f***” moment Hideo Kojima would do more often if he loved videogames as much as he hates them.
When the ending comes, it’s a small wonder, coming full circle and leaving the inevitable question up in the air: where will Reflections go from here? I don’t know. Lightning can strike twice, but as is often the case with the industry, it might never hit the same place again.
