Fantastic! Roll on friday!

I'm torn. I really want to like this game, because it's set in San Francisco, looks good, has a great line up of cars, but...

I REALLY HATE the car swapping gimmick in this game. It's so out of place and makes it so cars are like tissues. Why even have licensed cars, if you're not going to care about them or get used to their idiosyncrasies?

Have you played the demos yet? This game rocks.

Look, I was feeling exactly how you are feeling about the entire shifting mechanic - on paper it sounds stupid, and the story element they created to explain shifting in the single-player, is probably the stupidest thing I have seen in gaming in ages.

But then I played the single-player demo, and all my months and months of reservations about this game, just evaporated. A week later, I played the multi-player demo, and it only served to reinforce what I had already felt from playing the single-player demo.

The bottom line is, this is a game. And the funny thing with games, is that gameplay trumps everything. Good gameplay will make a game that sounds like shit on paper, the best game on Earth. And bad gameplay will turn the best idea for a game ever, into the worst game ever made. The guys at Reflections nailed the gameplay - this is some of the best arcade-styled driving I have had the chance to play all gen. And just like that, this game shot from the very bottom of my list of games to even think about in 2011, to so close to the very top of the 'must buy' list, it ain't even funny. I mean right now, there are only a very small handful of games I want more than this one: Battlefield 3, Skyrim, Uncharted 3, Gears 3, and Rage. Pretty much in that order. And after playing the demos, Driver: SF, a game that I spent the past year thinking I was going to hate, joins them at the very top of my fall shopping list.

Spot on, i thought this game would be awful with the teleporting but it worked out fine and the demo was top notch.

I played the demo. Makes it all the more painful. If the cars handled like crap or the open-world SF was crappy, it would be easier to dismiss. But they didn't handle poorly and the open-world caricature of SF is great.

I understand games. Been playing them for some 30-odd years now and been making them for 25. I still did not like the body switching and I don't like that you're just using the cars as tools versus having an attachment to the cars.

But alas, EA has fucked-off the Need for Speed franchise and turned it into... I dunno...

I'll probably pick up Driver, but I'd really like an arcade-like street racer where you can customize your car.

I played the demo for 5 minutes then deleted it. I was burning rubber in style, (just like my infamous Warthog manouvers *Dave....you tell them what I mean lol*), and I hit a jump in the road at full speed. As I took off, I got about 8 feet of air nd tried to divert my car over the central barrier in order to switch lanes and evade capture, but the game simply didn`t allow me to do so.

Get midnight club LA if you aint already. Suprisingly good in all areas.

QFT

LOL. I'm familiar with MC:LA. I worked on it. ;)

What part did you work? I find the soundtrack in that game the best of any game to date!

I was Lead Designer during pre-production, but let's just say Rockstar's work environment wasn't to my liking, so I left. Game turned out fine though and in light of the competition that's come out after it, is looking better and better every day.

And yes, the soundtracks on most Rockstar games are pretty awesome.