Road 96

Game looks ok - it has a very simplistic graphical style, yet pretty bad performance, but it can look really good at places and has a nice athmosphere. Music is amazing!!! Everything is extremely linear and locked in though! In the short episodes that make up the game there are invisible walls everywhere and everything is totally on rails! You can't pass even the lowest obstacle, or jump, so no exploration at all here. No physics or real interactions with environment either, unless something is scripted. Everything you interact with in the game is through a prompt that shows up on the screen, like "kick rock", "search trash", "open door" etc. The only real "gameplay" here is in the form of mobile-style mini-games, like click left/right to instantly switch a car between left/right lane to avoid traffic, or a very simple slide puzzle, or shooting a gun in a totally scripted action sequence, and so on and so on. I didn't care THAT much for dialogue/story, but at some places it was exciting and well made. But there are like no real choices! Time and time again I got answers from conversations that did fit all the lines I had to choose between, and if I sometimes tried to avoid doing something I instantly realice it wasn't an option. Probably some choices here and there might matter a bit, but trust me when I say the majority has scripted outcomes written in stone! The music is what saves this game, it is amazing! The game itself though is very simplistic, and almost no real gameplay at all. Can still be entertaining though for the short ride it is, just know what you're buying and don't expect too much.

This is a first person narrative game inbetween a walking simulator and an adventure game, with a part of Fallout 3 style scavenging in ruins filled with trash and non repetitive, well integrated mini games. The art and musical score are nice and their coherence quite immersive. You play as a succession of unnamed teenagers trying to migrate out of their totalitarian country. Some of your attempts will be successful, others won't, and through each step of your trips you'll meet recurring characters who will be influenced by your actions and dialogue choices. While being entirely scripted, the clever modular scenes system hides well the cogs of the game mechanics, at least during your first playthrough which will be fantastic : you'll be fully immersed and at no point you'll feel you're following the usual scenaristic tree of the genre, waiting to be surprised by the next step as if it was an open world game. The illusion will shatter on your second playthrough, where you'll explore the scenes that didn't appear in the first, and try different choices, revealing the game as much smaller as it seemed, but you'll still feel rejoiced by the experience. The characters are quite caricatural, but it fits the cartoonish style, and some scenes are indeed reminiscent of the cinematographic references. The depiction of the fascist state is manichaean and a bit shallow, but, hey, you'll be incarnating rebelling teenagers, after all.

I loved playing this game. It was a nice, relaxing change from what I usually play. The music was wonderful, so much so that I'm adding a few tracks to my playlist. Let's get into it. Pros: The music. "The Road" is 100% going into my playlist. The atmosphere. The game has different moods, just like the people playing it, other times, you get that horror vibe, you don't know what to expect. It was believable (to the extend that a video game can be) and made for very good game play. The story got you wanting to fight against the far left big government controlling every aspect of your life. No real "woke"ness. I'm glad to say that this game stayed away from the woke foolishness that we see in the real life media. Conspiracy theories: Was it a government plot? Did the Black Brigade really do that? (I'm not going to spoil it for you). The game makes you care for the Black Brigade whom you can see engaging in actual protesting, and you actually get angry at the totalitarian government leader and have the chance to fight against the border wall keeping citizens in. Minigames. I loved the minigames, they were different and unexpected and very interesting. A nice break from the narrative. It needs more of them. Cons: At times the game can feel as if it only has the illusion of choice. Very depressing as it spoils the gameplay. You do get notified when you make a decision that has consequences but there are times when the narrative of the scene makes it feel as if there was only ever one outcome to it. Controls can be a little awkward. I attribute this to the style of game that it is. I'm not very used to playing this narrative style so it could just be normal. Needs additional endings. I know this would increase the game size and such but I think the game would work better if there were more than just the few different endings that are included. Perhaps there will be DLCs that will enable this.

Very simple gameplay, no challenge at all in surviving, getting abilities or exploring. The story overall and most of the events are shallow and straightforward. Characters are exaggerated. Because of the nature of narration, events flow doesn't feel consecutive and change of them feels very abrupt, I can't catch the vibes when they turn on some music.

The art direction is awesome, with memorable characters and a really in depth story, but the problem is that it seems too much fast sometimes, with some cuts here and there to just make you pass to the next level. For now i only played the game once but for what i saw seems that not all the choices you make are important, only in the endings with the various characters. A really fun activity was finding all the collectibles but, in my opinion, there could be more, because in the middle of the run i had already collected all the tapes. The soundtrack is awesome and if you want to listen to it whitout buying it, note that is avaliable on Spotify. Also i loved the minigames, they should be playable outside of the main story! The only negative thing is that some textures are really low res on some spots and you'll notice them.