First things first, no, I am not reporting live from E3. Which is a shame, because that would be pretty awesome. But I thought that as this is predominantly a gaming site, and we haven’t had too many updates recently, I’d do a news piece and share a few of my thoughts.

As I was looking through stuff from E3 for Valve’s latest trailer, I found a link to ‘Driver: San Francisco’. Immediately Portal 2, which I already know isn’t coming out until next year, was forgotten. I have long been a fan of Driver, and I’d heard rumours that a new one was in the works, but I’d not come across any definite news.

That’s all changed now. At E3, a trailer and demo were shown, and the game was announced to be due for the last quarter of this year, on all the main platforms. It looks promising. For those of you who’d rather watch a video of the event at E3 at this point than read my rambling piece, follow this link.

The original Driver was a brilliant game, which I have already written about in Retrocity (Remember that feature? I might get around to writing more of them after the exam season…).

Driver 2 I have played some of on an emulator, because for whatever reason there was never a PC version. It is equally brilliant, with similar gameplay but upgraded features, such as actually having curved roads. There is, however, the possibility to go on foot from one car to another, which is very difficult to control. Maybe it’s just the emulator, I don’t know.

And then we come to Driv3r, the third instalment. It was still a good game in my view, despite all the bad reviews it has, but somehow it didn’t convey the brilliance of the first two. I think the main problem was that it had too many on-foot missions, and weapons. It was trying to copy the Grand Theft Auto series, instead of doing what the last two games did best: driving.

So I was pleased to hear that the new Driver game, the first since Ubisoft bought the rights to the series, is taking Driver ‘back to the roots of the game’. It will be, once more, a game focused on driving. The classic driving environment of San Francisco has returned as the location for the game, and the music in the trailer has the same feel as that of the original game’s San Francisco tracks (In fact, I think it’s just a remix). Tanner is back as the controllable character, as he was in the first 3 games. (It might be worth me mentioning that there was a 4^th Driver, Parallel Lines, which I have never played, and which starred a different main character). But to enable access to a massive range of, for the first time in Driver, real cars without on-foot control, a new feature has been added, and must be explained in the plot. So it turns out this whole game is a ‘Life on Mars’-style story, with Tanner still in a coma after being shot at the end of Driv3r, and the action is playing out in his head. The new feature is called shift, and allows the player, at any point in the game, to select any vehicle on the map and jump into the driver’s seat instantly. Apparently this ability will be upgradeable, increasing the area from which cars can be chosen.

This feature has split the fan base, it would seem from comments on the video. Personally, I like the idea. It puts the focus back onto driving and eliminates the need for walking and weaponry which, although welcome in some games, I never thought had any place in the Driver series.

In conclusion, this game looks good. It looks very good. I’m seriously hoping it’s not too good in certain areas, though, because if it requires a high performance machine, I may just have to buy a new computer to play it on. And just to top off the awesomeness I see in this game, one of the available cars is the DMC DeLorean, which opens up possibilities for a potentially brilliant Easter egg when holding the speed at 88mph…

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