8 Popular Video Game Mechanics That Suddenly Disappeared
6. Vehicular Shifting
The most recent entry into the Driver franchise, 2011's Driver: San Francisco, introduced an innovative new mechanic for the racing genre - shifting.
The game's amazingly coked-out premise - in which a comatose Tanner finds himself able to inhabit the bodies of any other driver on the road - is really just a gonzo excuse for players to teleport into any other vehicle on the map they so please.
Being able to shift into a car and quickly drive it directly into the path of an enemy - or other racers in multiplayer - is stupendously entertaining, and while this mechanic was by far the best-reviewed aspect of the game, it's gone barely anywhere since.
Sure, The Crew franchise dabbled in shifting between certain vehicles, but where open-world racing games are concerned, a full-fat version of this mechanic should be a no-brainer. Why doesn't, say, Forza Horizon let us instantly scour the map and leap into any car on the highway?
Though there are probably technical challenges involved with implementing such a mechanic, Driver did it brilliantly almost 15 years ago.