Road 96: Mile 0

Road 96, while not a particular favourite of mine, did nonetheless make an impression with its memorable characters and, due to where and when I played it, uncomfortably timely political theme. The prequel, however, tones down the former and cranks up the latter, which doesn't strike me as a particularly good balance. The story's not bad, but not terribly original either, with pretty much everything playing out as expected, without many surprises. Being a prequel doesn't really help in this regard. Also, the ending made Zoe - a rather likeable character in the original - into a surprisingly abhorrent one. Not the best of choices there. Like the original, Mile 0 is a first-person adventure, although this time around it's set mostly in a single location of White Sands city, with only the final portion taking things outside. The familiar gameplay is broken up by some minigames, far too many of which are skateboarding with confusing QTEs and a camera that makes it needlessly difficult at times. Luckily, after you crash into something a few times, you're given an option to skip that section of the minigame, which is very welcome. Also those skateboarding levels make zero sense diegetically, not without the characters being under influence of some heavy-hitting hallucinogens. Oh, and there's one very recognisable song by a very well-known real-world band there, which, while admittedly very awesome, definitely clashed with the game's fictional world. I was also unpleasantly surprised by the fact that the main characters are only voice-acted when not controlled by the player. Was there a budgetary reason for this? Overall, Mile 0 doesn't really resemble the original Road 96 as much as I would've hoped, not until very late in the game anyway. For the better part of my time spent with it I just couldn't shake the feeling that the devs somehow didn't know what it was that made the original Road 96 work, and when the game finally switched gears, it was too little, too late.