Driver San Francisco: arcade driving with a genuinely interesting idea make for a memorable racing game
On my quest to play old games that I missed back when they were new releases, I actually stumbled on Driver San Francisco by chance. I was never a big fan of non-karting racing games in general, although I did enjoy some arcade racers in the past, and I never played a Driver game properly either. I vaguely remember trying Parallel Lines 20 years ago or so, but I'm aware that the series took different directions with 3 and PL so overall that wasn't what got me convinced to get a physical copy for my old PS3 of San Francisco when I found it in a local shop: rather, it was a youtube video I watched a few years ago that gave a brief look into the main mechanic that makes this game unique.
Well... my expectations were exceeded :O
San Francisco is, in practice, an open-world racing game comparable to Burnout Paradise and the late PS2/early PS3 Need for Speed games: you have access to an open-world where you can freely drive around, and events are spread across the map which make you beat challenges of varying nature. The main story missions unlock as you go through them, and progressing unlocks the side events (races, chases, time trials, and so on and so forth) and the "hazards" (smaller challenges that usually ask you to perform a stunt of some sort within a time limit while driving in the open-world).
The thing that makes this game unique is the "shift" mechanic. Without going into detail at the narrative "reason" that makes this possible in universe (it's not that important IMHO), the game lets you go into a "fly-through" mode with the press of a button, abandoning your current car. You have the option of moving all over the map (at varying zoom levels, which are also unlocked by story progression), pick any vehicle you find on the road and take immediate control of it. You can always do this in the open-world and during all missions except for the few ones that limit it by design.
This unlocks a wide variety of approaches to beat story and secondary challenges that are not possible in other racing games. For example, if the game requires you to chase and destroy a car, instead of chasing and ramming it, you may decide to shift to a random car coming from the opposite direction and crash into the target for maximum damage. If there are a lot of cars that you are chasing at the same time, you can also choose for example to shift into a large vehicle (e.g. a bus), drive into the wall and block the way in a narrow street, causing everyone to crash into it. The game is filled with situations where shifting is either required or useful, and while there aren't a lot of strategies, the game has a wide variety of event types that always give you a new situation where you can apply said strategies.
This is also enhanced by the (in my opinion) wacky atmosphere. The story is definitely over-the-top and while it isn't exactly a writing masterpiece it never takes itself very seriously which helps in making the journey at least good as an excuse for the gameplay. There is one aspect I found very funny at times: the protagonist, when he shifts into another vehicle, takes control of the driver and any passenger that may be present will still act as if the original driver is there, resulting in some funny dialogue exchanges every now and then.
Even the base driving model is fun, as far as my very limited experience with arcade racing games goes at least, and the game sports more than 100 (mostly) licensed cars that often control completely different from each other: so you feel incentivized to keep trying new cars, beat secondary events to obtain the in-game currency needed to access new cars, and stick to them to learn how each car type behaves. For some secondary events choosing the right car for that specific challenge will help as well (e.g rally cars for events mostly taking place on dirt tracks).
Now, Driver San Francisco isn't perfect. For one, while the premise is great, the game does suffer from some repetition that gets worse the more you play (there are a lot of things to do, but a lot of things are variations of pre-existing events; main story missions are better but there aren't many of them either). I loved the game a lot, as you may tell from this mostly gushing post, yet after some time I still decided to stop doing side events and focus on the main story to complete it. So, in practice, the good parts of this game don't make it stay fresh forever, and based on how much you'll like the gameplay I imagine it may not even last as long as it did for me.
The execution overall isn't perfect, but considering the end result I'm still very happy that a game like this got to be made. It's even made me to consider playing the earlier Driver games despite none of them being like San Francisco, which is quite the result! (spoiler bonus: >!a certain secret mission in San Francisco may have helped with that :D!<)
It's too bad that San Francisco suffered from the same issue that many other driving games (arcade, sims and all of the in-between) from the past suffered from: licensing issues causing them to be delisted. It really doesn't deserve to be forgotten, especially for a game with such an interesting idea that could've been iterated over by sequels or just other racing games!
...or maybe there were similar games, especially on the indie front, that I missed. In that case, consider this post also a request for recs :)
TL;DR: Driver San Francisco is a unique open-world arcade racing game that introduces a mechanic that lets you "shift" into any car in the world, making for incredibly fun gameplay challenges. The game doesn't stay fresh through a 100% completion but in my opinion still holds your attention throughout the main story and some of the side content, making for a memorable experience even within its own genre. I would recommend trying it without hesitation... if only it was easy to get on modern stores!