And because I submitted my PopMatters post a bit late for a Tuesday release it got pushed back to Thursday, so I ended up giving everyone a double dose of Driver: San Francisco love. My Nightmare Mode post though focuses more on the ongoing narrative I seem to be building about racing/driving games across my posts.
I realize how damn lucky I got that the first driving game I tried was Burnout: Paradise with all junk I’ve been going through since. Thankfully after about a half dozen games (only some of which I’ve written about) I finally found another great racing game. The reason I love this game so much is because of the depth I find to it, not only in its narrative and story, but also its formalism and in this post as I discuss, its aesthetics. It’s fun without only being about the enjoyment of what you are doing while you are doing it. It is a game with a personality. Personality goes a long way.
If nothing else, this piece made me do some research on 1970s and 1980s cop show. Some of the shows I thought of as with a 70s style are actually from the 1980s. Maybe its because broadcast TV is slightly behind trends or something. Though when I found some clips of Starsky and Hutch I found what Driver was aping.
Fun fact. I came up with the title this time and everyone liked it. I’ve been off lately in titles, but I can come up with a good one now and then. Oh and I’m just going to quote one editor suggestion because it deserves it. It was a potential example on how to expand one section of the piece.
EXAMPLE* I’m going to go with the one that lets me skid through a corner and fruit stand, jamming back on the accelerator to awkwardly line up previously mentioned car transporter, hitting it at a bad angle, and 50 feet, 3 barrel rolls and a crowd of frantic pedestrians later, landing on my opponent, whipping off my shades and saying “You should be careful to not let things…..get on top of you…
So, yeah, after that cringe worthy moment, head on over to Nightmare Mode and read more on Driver: San Francisco.