Driver: San Francisco is an action-adventure racing video game and the fifth instalment in the Driver series. Developed by Ubisoft Reflections and published by Ubisoft, it was released in September 2011 for the PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows, with an edition for Mac OS X in March 2012. The game sees players traversing a fictional version of San Francisco and the Bay area conducting missions through the use of licensed real-world cars, with the ability to shift into any car in the game's setting in most platform editions. The game's main story sees players controlling John Tanner, a police detective, who falls into a coma pursuing his nemesis Charles Jericho following a prison breakout after the events of Driv3r, and finds himself piecing together his plan in a dream world while it is happening in real life.
The game received favourable reviews upon its release, with the exception of the Wii edition which received mixed reviews. A mini-comic series was released which provides plot details of the events between Driv3r and San Francisco, with the game receiving a collector's edition that include additional multiplayer vehicles and single player events.
Gameplay
A new feature is Shift, which allows Tanner to teleport from one car to another without discontinuing the mission. One of the inspirations for Shift comes from Google Earth. The game is also being described as a "return to the roots" of the series as the ability to get out of the car, which was introduced in Driver 2, has been removed and replaced with the ability to Shift (teleport) into other cars, as the developers felt that too many games have this kind of feature already and "it wasn't desirable for us to just copy that exact mechanic." With Shift, the player can also start missions. As well as the ability to use Shift, all cars will be equipped with a 'boost' feature, requiring the player to push up on the left thumbstick to use it. Players can also push L1 on the PlayStation 3 or the left shoulder button on the Xbox 360 version of the game to perform a special 'ram' attack on cars. The film director mode, which was absent from Parallel Lines, also returns, and players can share their videos on the Driver Club website. The game runs at 60 frames per second.
Multiplayer
Split screen and online multiplayer are also available for the first time in the series with 19 different game modes including trailblazer, tag, sprint GT, cops and robbers, among others. In Trail Blazer, the players have to follow the trail of an AI-controlled car to accumulate points. The player who accumulates more points will win the match. The Tag game mode is similar to regular tag, but in reverse. All the players are trying to "tag," or hit, one player. Once he is hit, the person who tagged him is now it. The multiplayer will also have
Plot
Setting
The game's setting focuses on a fictionalized version of San Francisco, and surrounding regions of Marin County and Oakland, recreating the geography, generalized layout of the city, and notable landmarks including the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge. The recreation features around 208 miles (335 km) of roads, though the amount of roads and territory in the setting is reduced in the Wii edition, as the main bridges of the city are blocked. The events of the game take place six months after the events of Driv3r; a mini-comic series provides background on events during the six-month period.
Story
Hours after being shot by John Tanner, an undercover police detective, notorious crime kingpin Charles Jericho escape his custody in a Turkish hospital and flees back to the United States. Tanner, alongside his partner Tobias Jones, pursues after him and manages to locate and arrest him six months later in San Francisco. On the day of his trial for multiple homicides and drug trafficking, Jericho stages a breakout from his prison convoy, overpowering his guards and eliminating the police escort. Tanner and Jones, overseeing this while monitoring the convoy's route, proceed to pursue after him, but are caught off-guard when Jericho loses sight of them in an alley and proceed to chase them down it in his prison van. Tanner does his best to outrun him, but is forced into a street of heavy traffic that results in a devastating crash, putting him in a coma.
Tanner awakens a few moments later in his car with Jones to find everything is back to normal, despite Jericho still being on the loose and himself hearing voices in his head. When the pair track down the missing prison van, they find it abandoned and on fire, whereupon Tanner finds himself suddenly disappear from car and into the driver's seat of an ambulance. To his shock, he learns he is actually inhabiting the body of the ambulance's driver, and upon driving it to the hospital, returns to his car with questions about what happened. Tanner soon discovers he has an ability that lets him "shift" into another person's body, appearing and sounding like them but retaining his own memories and skills. Deciding to use this to his advantage, Tanner begins helping people across the city while deducing Jericho's plan.
Tanner begins to discover that Jericho is after materials to create a chemical weapon, intending to hold the city hostage with it. Deciding to infiltrate his organization and prevent his plan, Tanner inhabits the body of a small-time crook, but quickly find Jericho knows it is him, and is horrified to find him able to not only shift as well, but able to possess his body, forcing him to combat his actions. The detective eventually discovers that he has been in a dream world for the entire duration since the crash - the Jericho he is facing is actually a mental projection of him in his mind, and all of his actions were influenced by his subconscious listening to news flashes from a television in his hospital room. As Tanner combats him in order to regain control and end his coma, the detective discovers that Jericho's actions in the real world go against his character, and suspects he is plotting something else.
