10 Incredible Video Games You Can't Buy Anymore
1. Driver: San Francisco - Multiplatform
As the first game I worked on at Ubisoft Reflections, this may be a biased entry, but... so what? Go make your own inferior list with Scott Pilgrim in it, or something.
Driver: San Francisco challenged design norms in a way that, arguably, no driving game has done since. Reflections had a real challenge - how do you take the failure of Driv3r (which I pronounce as "drivv-three-urr") and build a game that both allows players to drive any car in the city they want, without the design headache of getting out of the car (and all the mechanics that come with that)? How do you make a driving game that's only about driving allow that kind of freedom of choice on the fly?
Well... magic. Obviously. Mega coma magic.
Tanner, our story's hero, is involved in a crash at the outset of our story, is plunged into a deep coma, and discovers he can leave his prostrate body at will, a disembodied spirit that can jump into and possess any car driver in the city.
Part of the joy of Driver: San Francisco is possessing the different drivers and getting a brief but rich fly-on-the-wall look into their respective lives. Jump into a family sedan and you'll be in the middle of an argument about stopping for fast food. Jump into a lorry and you might hear the lonely thoughts of the trucker. Everyone was just living their respective lives, until you COMA MAGICKED them.
Sadly, Ubisoft decided this game was just too awesome for this generation of gamers to experience, and stopped selling it.