Driver: San Francisco

Driver: San Francisco brought Ubisoft Reflections' series back to its roots – open-city chases – while giving it a new, eccentric hook. Series veteran John Tanner falls into a coma after a serious accident, and most of the game takes place inside his mind as a dreamlike version of San Francisco. Thanks to an ability called Shift, the player can leap out of their own car at any time, soar above the streets, and instantly transfer into any other vehicle anywhere on the map, take control of it, and continue the chase or block a fleeing rival with a crossing car. The mechanic transforms the pace of classic action racing beyond recognition, lets players solve chases like a puzzle, and opens up room for absurd stunts that earlier entries in the series never allowed.

The game launched simultaneously on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC, with a Wii version arriving a little later, built on a lightened engine due to the console's significantly weaker hardware. The core console and PC versions share the same content, open map, and story campaign, differing only in resolution, texture draw distance, and frame-rate smoothness, so there's no real reason to choose between them based on content – only the preferred platform and controller matter. San Francisco itself is rendered as a sprawling open map with faithfully recreated neighborhoods, bridges, and iconic hills you can drift down in trucks, buses, police cars, or sports specials depending on the current mission, while the player gradually unlocks a growing garage of vehicles with improving performance and looks, and beyond the main story can tackle dozens of optional challenges – drifts, jumps, or street races – scattered across the whole map.

Why play: Driver: San Francisco is an ideal choice for players who want an open world without unnecessary seriousness – the Shift mechanic makes it one of the most original arcade chase games of its generation, and it works just as well on PS3, Xbox 360, or PC, whichever one you pick up.