Driver: San Francisco

Accelerate, hold handbrake, screech to a stop amid the bustling afternoon traffic, horns blaring. Try again, yanking the wheel this time, and instead pull an unscheduled doughnut.

Then accelerate, wait for the corner, tap the handbrake...slide and slam into the building on the street adjacent. Then hit a phone booth. A bus. A car, or - god forbid - a police cruiser.

I'm still no closer to pulling off the perfect power-slide, and the city is strewn with wreckage. The mounting collateral damage costs ring up in my head as I enter another turn...and ram my fender into an oncoming truck.

Welcome to the opening hour of Driver: San Francisco, sometime in the 1970s. While it guides you slowly into the central gameplay mechanics and overarching storyline with one firm hand, it's simultaneously brutalising you and your driving skills with hard slaps from the other. By the developer's own admission its a title that captures the iconic car chases of the period - if you can find that sweet spot that is the perfect power-slide.

Frustration isn't an issue though, as you can feel that perfect moment as you rush past, or brake too soon when nearing it. And between mistakes that costs the city's budget dear, you occasionally do pull of a powerslide that'd make Starsky & Hutch proud. It's all about learning what you did wrong and whittling that away until you're left with what you got right.

It's a lesson that Reflections is applying as well, but to the Driver series as a whole.

The franchise has made an increasing number of wrong turns over the course of its twelve year history, resembling more old wreck than classic vintage status by the time the fourth in the series, Parallel Lines, careered into consoles in 2006. According to Creative Director Martin Edmonson, it was time to go back to driving school.

So, after five years worth of development, this is what the rethink has yielded: back in time, back to business, back to the roots.

We're in the 1970s, locale San Francisco (a condensed version of the real thing to avoid long hikes between objective points), and riding with detective Tanner. There's no chewing up the miles on foot; the entire game, plot and all, takes place from behind the wheels of San Fran's many iconic vehicles.

Well, strictly that's not true. The entire game, aside from the opening tutorial and, unless Relfections have a mean streak a quarter mile-wide, the game's closing act, is set in Tanner's head, the cop dreaming the whole experience after a car crash puts him into a coma.

The setup is perfect for explaining away the title's central mechanic; the power of Shift. It means boosting cars, Ghostbusters-style, as you can possess any driver within your dream city at the press of a button. It means you've got access to a range of wheels - Reflections claims there's over 140 licensed rides cruising the city streets - as well as a variety of missions that come with certain vehicles.

It's not hot-swopping like Battlefield though, and you're not restricted to line of sight. Tap the Shift button and you'll go astral and be automatically yanked high into the air and given a top-down view of the city. You can zoom in or out, and pulling the cursor over any vehicle will flash up a list of stats, so you can find a ride that fits in with what you need doing.

Those wheeled wonders with missions attached will be highlighted on the map, and they're a diverse bunch. In the space of the opening hour we flash between overtaking traffic unscathed in a test run of a sports car, fighting to stay bonnet to bumper with a escaping felon while behind the wheel of a police cruiser, running a dying patient to a hospital in an ambulance, and played both filmmaker and stuntman as a news crew seeking excitement for its latest 'craziest car calamities' programme.

These side missions mix light relief with necessary progression; some need to be completed to unlock the next story-related objective. One can suspect that each tier of the story will be preceded by a multitude of alternate personalities and professions, each with their own mini-story and chatter between driver and passengers. While I'd have preferred to dig more into the main story before splitting and dividing, it does show the diversity on hand here.

Tanner's the only one in on the ruse, taking over the mind and appearance of his victim. While the cop seems to accept his new found powers relatively quickly (brain damage will do that to you) happenings in the real world will effect Tanner's dreamscape. While in the opening hour that only amounts to billboards altering to adopt words and phrases overheard from reality, there might be scope for some Inception-style interplay between both worlds. What that could be though, Reflections isn't saying: a question to the developer leads to a raised eyebrow but a very careful non-commital answer.

My time with the game finishes with a screeching halt by a garage hotspot. Here you're damaged rides will be repaired instantaneously, and opens up a sub-menu to let you buy garages, cars and upgrades. The first acts as fast travel spots around the sprawling metropolis - ten in all. The rides on offer are of the kind that'd you likely have to scour the city streets for a while before chancing upon, and need to be earned first through racking up Willpower, the tag of Driver's currency, increased through completion of missions and such.

One problem I notice is the one prevalent in all sandbox titles - the ability to get lost. The city's been built so there's landmarks visible, and therefore you can theorise that the objective points will congregate close to these to make it easier to learn the streets. To begin a lot of San Fran is locked, punching through the red haze that designates them resetting you back the way you came. A button press will expand the mini-map and give a clue to how big this place is, but as ever - you can't drive and read a map at the same time, no matter what people say.

What I'm eager to see is if the disparate missions manage to form a cohesive whole, as its very overwhelming to begin with and lacks firm direction. That's something that could clear the deeper you dig into Tanner's dream world. There's a definite hook in the Shift feature, and nailing the control of the city's four-wheeled travellers. But what I really want to see if if there's a great police story under all the flash - something that'll only become apparent with a longer play through.