The absolute cornerstone of gameplay, SHIFT is Driver: San Francisco's unique contribution to the genre. The visual spectacle is accompanied by appropriate auditory punch, with visceral crunching and splintering sounds, the wince-inducing shrieks of paint peeling off and a funk-infused licensed soundtrack, including a particularly awesome Diplo remix of Marlena Shaw's "California Soul."īut what happens when your car's too broken to go on? That's where the game's "SHIFT" mechanic comes in. Even minor scrapes, which don't actually decrease your car's health, will leave scratches down its side or shatter its side-view mirrors, which then dangle uselessly by a few wires. You can run over a VW Beetle in a tanker or crash a Chevy Volt into the side of an H3 and it'll react realistically to the impact, glass flying everywhere, frame crumpling as the hood careens off onto the sidewalk.
It's all right, though-that first impression almost immediately gives way to (if you're as poor a driver as I am) the realization that these licensed vehicles all take realistic damage. It's a minor nitpick, but it makes a bad first impression. Driver: San Francisco simply uses the game engine any time it needs to show you cars instead of people. They also run at a visibly lower frame rate than the game itself, a fact that is practically thrown in your face. While the cars are accurate and gorgeous models of licensed vehicles, the animation and character models used in the CG cutscenes are awkward and look like plastic. The first thing that strikes you about Driver is its graphics. Why, then, did I find myself getting up in the middle of the night to play a title that subtly mixes elements of these together under one awning? I don't play destruction derby games, or anything in the Twisted Metal series, and my relationship with Interstate '76 was less than friendly. They're frustrating exercises in a type of precision I don't possess. Perform the following actions to unlock these film-inspired challenges.I don't normally play non-kart racers.