Blog Archives
0 When I’m God, Everyone Drives
(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.
0 Now Playing… #5
Jamestown: Legend of the Lost Colony (PC) – Final Form Games
They all look the same.
It’s the rethoric du jour when it comes to shmups; a consensual blindness that in two strokes, fails to recognize the genre’s intricate evolution and gives carte blance to other series which do little other than affixing subtitles or numerals to stale formulas. Jamestown shouldn’t be seen as an eye opener to the history of shmups, at least mechanically; its strength lies more in its creative vision than the scope of its gameplay. This doesn’t mean its systems are outdated or lacking in verve, but these will seem a secondary or tertiary concern when juxtaposed with the concept, and that is:
A shmup set in a 17th century British colonial Mars.
