I love traveling and to a lesser extent driving. It was one of the many things I liked about some of the vacations I've taken (they involve driving), I like finding and photographing old gas stations, doing research on stuff, that was one reason I created my other site Numbered Exits (the other being retooling Carbon-izer), and before I had to deal with the "now back into the loading dock" part there was a part of American Truck Simulator that were just great.

I picked up Road 96 during a Steam sale for like two bucks and it's some roguelike where you hitchhike across America, er, Petria, on the titular road to escape the country and its oppressive leadership. There are hints that sound like it could sound like it's a criticism of American politics though the propaganda for the "evil president" is almost more like Soviet-style propaganda posters.

I understood this to have some sort of roguelike element so there are probably different outcomes. The first part is pretty boring, you drive in a straight desert with only political billboards with "President Tyrak" and the stand-in rival "Florres" (the blue background, text, and her not being a white male suggest that she's Democrat, or the "good" party in this case, though again they don't state that)...and then she also has propaganda posters everywhere which you can vandalize, implying she's just as bad. There's also a hanging air freshener that's basically a Little Tree and has the same (trademarked) design with the contours and all. (Despite being able to drive indefinitely, your mileage never seems to go up). There's a scripted sequence with a cop which then turns into a minigame of swerving around in traffic (you're allowed to crash into cars head-on, but not drive in the desert).

We immediately cut to a trailer park, where our player character befriends another teenager. Once again I'm confused about the backdrop of the game. I guess it's set in 1996 to avoid the whole Internet and smartphones thing, there's something on the radio about the election being a fraud (remember, this came out in summer 2021, so that was still timely), and the whole "they don't us teens to have power" thing sounds like it's trying to appeal to some generational zeitgeist that doesn't really exist anymore (or some really bad YA novel). Anyway, after this episode I somehow didn't have my car anymore, so I had to hitchhike, taxi, bus, or go on foot. I chose the last option and ended up getting arrested after passing it. Then I started as a new kid, and found myself as the tiebreaker vote between some "concerned citizens" who aren't sure if they want to be "the resistance" or outright terrorists. All the while time continues to move on, with various vignettes and stuff to come.

Well, if I was interested, anyway. Mouse movement is so slow that I thought it was needed a cleaning (it's perfectly fine) and that ruins an air hockey minigame. I played for over an hour and I was thinking "when does this get good" and that answer became "never". The problem is that I don't care for the storyline, I don't care for the minigames, and despite their claim that choices matter, when you have a bunch of scripted setpieces where you can't tell off key NPCs to go screw themselves (you're fighting THE MAN after all) it feels so on-rails. Meanwhile, the titular road is just a feature two-lane blacktop without much interest going for it. There was some not-Sony radio I had seen earlier (like "DOKY" or something along those lines) so you could at least have not-Exxon or not-Cracker Barrel or not-Burger King, you know, stuff you might see even on a highway. Wikipedia says it would be classified as an "adventure" and I suppose there is inventory to pick up, but if we were going for an adventure game set on the highways of America, er, Petria, something like Sam & Max Hit the Road would be a better choice. Sure this was only $2 but I probably spent slightly more than that in crummy truck stop casinos and at least they respected my time.

FINAL RATING:   

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