I like quirky. Games like
Disgaea and
Samba de Amigo entertain me on a level beyond that of mere
gameplay; they provide metaentertainment, if you'll allow me to join
the legion of folks who misuse that prefix. (What, I was already a
member? Shush.)
There are a few games that I bought strictly because of their
quirkiness--
Irritating Stick comes to mind--where the gameplay
ended up being, er, irritating enough that it sullied the unique
experience. Oddity doesn't make up for a shoddy game.
I bought
Road Trip because of its quirkiness. I knew that
it was really a game in the
Choro Q series, and while I don't like non-futuristic racing
games at all, I had heard the mysterious phrase "CarPG" used to
describe the experience. What red-blooded lover of RPGs and
quirkiness is capable of passing up something so strange?
Thankfully, the gameplay experience holds up to the promise of
quirk.
While the term "CarPG" is perhaps more clever than correct,
Road
Trip is a very involving adventure game where you play as, well, a
car. The goal of the game is to become President of the world;
to do that you must beat the President in a one-on-one race. Of
course, he won't race you until you win the world Grand Prix, and
you can't race in the Grand Prix until you have a Super A racing
license, and . . .
You can see where this goes.
The game is effectively broken up into two parts. There are the
races themselves, which are three-lap affairs that are over quite
quickly. (If you've seen people do endurance races in
Gran Turismo,
you'll understand why I think this is a good thing.) When you're not racing, though, you're driving around
the fairly expansive island "world" where the game is set, talking
to other "people," playing minigames, finding Choro Q Coins, and
taking photos.
To be honest, a lot of the adventure section is "tedious" in the
traditional sense. Trying to find the various photo booths,
trying to find the Choro Q coins, trying to find the right
vehicle to talk to--these sorts of things are what we typically
call "fetch quests." For some reason, though,
Road Trip
makes it entertaining. Perhaps it's the fact that you're driving
around like a madman instead of plodding around on foot. Maybe
it's because the physics engine is so goofy that you're waiting
to see how it'll react when you take that hill at 180mph. I don't
know what it is, really, but I know that quests which would make
me roll my eyes in another venue were fun and exciting here.
Maybe it's because of the quirkiness?
The game has issues--the physics engine
is completely
nutso, and you'll find yourself airborne for the slightest
reason; we're not talking "hopping off the ground" airborne, but
"flying fifty feet in the air" breakdowns of normality. The world is too
empty. You never see other cars tooling down the four-lane
highway. The various character vehicles stay in their proscribed
locations, cutting donuts and the like, and you seem to be the
only person with a real free will in the game. There are tons
of different car parts, but most of them are strict upgrades instead
of difficult decisions--the only part I ever switched around much
was the tires. The difficulty curve is also very skewed; you'll
find yourself tearing through the early races trivially, and then
the AI starts to annihilate you at the higher racing levels unless
you have the most expensive parts. Most of the minigames are easy,
but some of the stamp challenges (the Volcano, for example) are
exercises in frustration.
These issues do not ruin
Road Trip.
There is so much to do in the game; you can entertain yourself
with at least twenty different minigames, you can get teammates to help you in the
races (and you must if you wish to play in the Grand Prix), you
can collect the aforementioned coins and photos, you can just
do the races and keep upgrading your vehicles, you can try to get
all the stamps . . . I'm fairly sure that you can find
something
to do in
Road Trip no matter what mood you're in.
[I have to admit, I never gave the vehicle upgrades much thought. Since
you
are the car, though, it's actually a little creepy. Are you
ripping your still-beating "heart" out and replacing it with a new one?
Is this what humanity is going to be like in the future, with pick-n-choose
body shops? Am I reading too much into this game?]
It's good to know that sometimes quirk is still king. Or should I say
President?
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