For more on Driver: San Francisco, check out our full Driver: San Francisco review. Or, for more of the best Nintendo Wii games for a 10 year old, why not try our Family Game Finder
Driver: San Francisco on the Wii is an entirely different game to the 360/PS3/PC one, despite sharing the same moniker. With more of an emphasis on fun, and less of a focus on story, Driver: San Francisco on the Wii puts you in the shoes of John Tanner, and undercover detective who's infiltrating the gang world of San Francisco. Alternating your time between pulling off missions for the police and the gangs you're working undercover for, you'll be tailing suspects whilst trying not to spook them in order to eavesdrop, hunting down bad guys, and generally driving like a loon. It's a lot of fun.
The entire game seems to have been designed around making you feel as cool as possible, with the entire game designed to let you ape to world's greatest car chase scenes from popular films. With narrow alleys to whizz down, boxes that have been illogically stacked to smash through, and mental police who'll throw everything they have at you to take you down (but luckily aren't all that good at driving), you'll be moving from one incredible moment to the next, with plenty of laughs all around.
For children, though, the largest problem here is likely to be the control scheme, which requires the use of both the nunchuck and Wii Remote in order to play. With steering, accelerating, and breaking handled on the nunchuck's analogue stick and buttons respectively, there are plenty of times where you've having to do something entirely different with the Wii Remote - like shoot, or hold it vertically and moving it from side to side like an aerial to get a better signal in order to track down a crook - meaning your child will need to be able to pat their head and rub their tummy if they want to play this. It's a lot more complex than Mario Kart to get the hang of.
Surprisingly for a game about the criminal underworld, Driver: San Francisco is fairly light on mature content. In fact, the whole "criminal underworld" thing's handled with tongue in cheek, so nothing's taken all that seriously. The game does feature some very mild bad language, although "ass" and "jerk-off" are as strong as it gets, and some missions see you chasing cars through the streets, firing at them to bring them to a halt. On the plus side, though, there's no blood in the game, as you never actually see any people - the pavements are empty, and most of your time will be spent ramming cars.
Driver: San Francisco lends itself perfectly to family play, with a wide variety of options letting players of different skill levels play together. While one player handles the steering, another, whether its a younger child, or a younger sibling can play along as the car's gunner, effectively, co-operating together to complete the missions by shooting at cars you need to take down. Perfect for an older and younger sibling, or a parent and child. If you have a DS, you can link that to your Wii to play along with Driver: San Francisco too - by going across to download play on the DS, and selecting to download the Driver: San Francisco app, you'll be able to relay key information about the mission, and have access to a map, along with the ability to plant road blocks to stop any pursuers, and hack the police networks to get the cops off your tail. The DS functions are a great way for a non-tech savvy parent to help their child do well at the game (you put down roadblocks etc while they drive), and could be great for family bonding.
Age Ratings
Format Reviewed: Nintendo Wii
