Tag: Driver: San Francisco

Eric Swain Critical Responses

September ’12 Round Table Entry – Eschewing Realism

Last minute Eric as always. September’s BoRT topic, run now by Alan Williamson, theme is New Horizons. The blurb is as follows: 2K’s Chris Harmann recently said that achieving photorealism was the key to opening ‘new genres’ of games. Without discussing whether or not this is true (it isn’t), what genres or subjects have games left uncovered, and what should they be focusing on? Alternatively, if photorealism isn’t the limiting factor on the diversification and evolution of gaming experiences, what is? | more

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‘Driver: San Francisco’: The Best Game of 2011 that No One Played

A while back I got bored and wanted to see how PopMatter’s best games of 2011 compared with the reviews of the games over the year. Then I wondered if there were any high rating games that didn’t make the list. Which led me to look up what PopMatters review of Driver: San Francisco. Turns out we hadn’t done one. I set out to correct that. Now I could wax lyrical about Driver: San Francisco for thousands of words and, in fact, I have. | more

Eric Swain External Sources, Recent Posts

Never Break the Flow: Interface Design in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

Again, I write about Driver: San Francisco and again it’s at PopMatters. Instead of going the more esoteric route with the game, this time I went for straight design analysis simplicity. It only occurred to me afterwords that I probably should have started from this angle and worked my way up. I’m actually a little disheartened that nobody else has taken up the torch for this game and got to writing. It was largely forgotten once it was released and didn’t have that much hype industry wide, despite IGN’s best efforts to pump people up for it. | more

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‘Driver: San Francisco’ and ‘Drive’

In my campaign to single handedly push Driver: San Francisco into the critical consciousness I have written yet another piece for PopMatters on the game. That makes 3 total so far. I amaze myself that I’m still able to write about the game from fresh angles after all this time. I knew I was going to write about Driver and how it relates to Drive before I had even the seen the movie. I felt like there could have been a connection, but then I saw it and it’s a phenomenal movie and has absolutely no connection to what Driver is about despite the similar titles. | more

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The Intersection of Mechanics and Aesthetics in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

My second post on Driver: San Francisco is up on PopMatters. I’m surprised the title made it through at all. Hell, I’m surprised I wasn’t told to write something else. I mentioned on twitter I was playing fast and loose with terminology and was told that is how you know you made it. This piece spawned from the simple thought of how the game got around the problem of breaking my immersion by taking innocent civilians in their cars and smashing them into oncoming traffic. | more

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It’s all in the presentation: Why I let Driver: San Francisco get away with poor driving

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. | more

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Magical Realism as a Game Mechanic in ‘Driver: San Francisco’

My second post is up at PopMatters, this time looking at an actual game. Thanks to the scheduling of the hiatus on the Moving Pixels Blog at the end of last year meant that my second post would be pushed back to the new year. Driver: San Francisco is a game that is so much better than its advertising gives it any right to be. This is another case of the developers and PR not knowing how to sell their own game. Driver: San Francisco is a slow burn of a game. | more