Textbook Shovelware -- Driver: San Francisco

Starting with the Premise

The story really begin when Tanner nearly catches up to the armored transport van that has been commandeered by Jericho, whereupon Tanner's car is T-boned by the van, nearly killing him and leaving him in the coma-state in which the fantasy that is the game takes place. Who shot JR in the Matrix with Smokey and the Bandit?

This difficult to believe premise is abetted by Tanner's discovery of a psychic power in which he can leave his "body" at will, and occupy the bodies of the drivers of other cars throughout the city. This is useful because, sprinkled throughout the city are icons for Dare events, Challenge events, and Story events, the completion of which is how the player progresses through each chapter of the story in Story Mode.

The psychic power is actually sort of cool for the first few chapters, but it quickly changes over to stupid and then annoying -- especially after you learn that Jericho ALSO has that special ability.

Still the game has a tight story line, right? After all, reviewers from all of the major sites said so! And it is fun, right? Because after all, reviewers from all over the web have said so! And you can trust them, because they would NEVER just play the first chapter or two and then review the game, right? Right?! Actually it looks like that is precisely what has happened, because none of the mainstream reviewers mention the bad parts of the game, they only talk about how "innovative" it is, and how the folks at Ubisoft Reflections have, like the newest incarnation of rival game Saints Row, managed to strike off in their own unique direction with an over-the-top game story and experience, finally getting out from under the shadows of GTA. True that, it is just too bad that all of the game play elements are exhausted by the third chapter.

Loads of Suckiness

A great deal of repetition appears in the events, and when this is combined with the horrible physics system in the game, the unrealistic driving characteristics for the cars and trucks in the game, and a completely lackluster dialogue script, by the end of Chapter 4 these failings quickly illustrates why the game is now in the bargain bins at most bricks-and-mortar stores and heavily discounted online. The simple explanation? This game is utter and complete rubbish.

The "missions" are basically recycled content, and the "goals" include lots of repetition as you play and replay various versions of the same objective, in a very flawed game world. Add to that the incredibly impressive amount of grief-code that was placed into the game to force you to fail many of these missions/dares/actions over and over before you get lucky and succeed, and what you have is a recipe for frustration at levels rarely seen in other AAA games.

This game was not made in months -- it had years of development -- and it is clear that the only people that the developers showed their baby to were people that loved them too much to tell them the truth.

No AAA title should have you forcing yourself to play it, but once you get past the third chapter, the odds are you will have to force yourself to continue playing. Actually, the odds are that you will walk away from this game by that point, unless you feel like you simply have to unlock at least half of the Achievements so that it does not lame-up your Games Played list...

Ubisoft: You are Better than This

There are some sayings that should have been printed out and posted in the development rooms at Reflections, like "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Or "Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."

When you consider the ethics of video game creation, the "effort" that went into creating the story line and game play elements of DSF leaves me with a distinct feeling of being robbed. It is rare that you encounter a game -- especially a AAA game -- that leaves you feeling like there should be some sort of legal way to get the time you spent playing it refunded.

The problem is that the fun parts of the game are too few, and too far between, while the annoying bits are practically everywhere. It does no good to ask "What were they thinking?!" because IF they were thinking at all, it was about getting this game completed and released, and not whether it was good quality and entertaining. Which it is not.

The sad truth is that this game is not really even worth renting unless you simply have to play the next Driver game. And that is sad.