If I didn't already know No Straight Roads was a passion project, I would have suspected it. Some games feel that way from the start, almost filled with inspirations, homages, and shoutouts to everything the developers love. Whatever else you can say about NSR has a lot of heart to it, and it's always going to count for something.
It doesn't quite go together, however. No Straight Roads has stunning graphics, an incredible soundtrack, and a likeable cast, but the parts you play range from acceptable to counter-intuitive. It's never really bad, but it's much more interested in being an AV experience than anything else, with tough combat and a few bugs. NSR is well worth the trip, but it's the art and music A + wrapped around a C+ game.
Review of No Straight Roads: A Flawed But Sympathetic Rock Opera
No Straight Roads is set up to play like a tracklist on a concept album. You play as Mayday and Zuke, the two latest rock musicians from Vinyl City (which, to use Mayday's slang, is Singapore's future cyberpunk), as they literally engage in the fight to climb the charts and topple the electronic dance artists. who dominate the scene.
In Vinyl City, music is both its main industry and its source of energy, but the company that runs the place, NSR, visibly manipulates the population, distributes electricity unequally and, worst of all, stimulates EDM to the detriment of rock.
Mayday and Zuke's attempts to mount a revolution are half terrible revenge in the name of their musical genre and half an effort to topple NSR because it's boring. To do this, they fight their way into the concerts of the top five performers and hijack them in a high-level battle between the bands, mounting a kind of guerrilla campaign based on popularity.
This is perhaps the first high-tech dystopia I've ever seen in a work in any media where its leaders aren't comically evil; they just have a bad taste in music and they are little assholes. Their idea to retaliate is to dig up Zuke's older brother and send him to rap you, which is delivered in the same kind of cutscene any other game would use to introduce a hitman. The stakes are pretty low here, that's what I'm saying.
That's part of the charm of the game. Vinyl City has a real sense of place, even if you don't see it much, and the game is very good at making it feel like it has a real story. He's got style to spare, and I'd be really interested in seeing more of this weird universe.
The music takes center stage, though, and that's arguably to the detriment of everything else. This is the only game that I know of where its designers first created the soundtrack and then created the levels of the game to match it. Enemies attack and obstacles move to the beat of the music, and the more you can keep up with that beat, the better you'll do.
When it works, NSR really works. It might take a second to figure out what the game is actually asking you to do in any given encounter, especially when you reach one of the big multi-stage boss fights. Each has their gadgets, some of which are totally unique to this encounter and not often explained. It just trusts you to find out on the fly.
Once you unlock the double jump and air dash, which takes a relatively short amount of time, things start to flow together. At its best, NSR is like a big, well-produced music video, with fights that feel more like dancing than anything else.
It's buggy, though, and many of its ideas feel half-baked. The combat system could use another coat of paint, as it looks like it's going to be a brawler in the spirit of Devil May Cry, but there's never really anything you can just run and smack on. Standard enemies usually even hit you with a quick combo chain, and bosses are rarely vulnerable to actual melee hits.
You have a bunch of consumables and skills meant to enhance your combo potential, and they're all effectively useless. It's a bunch of tack-welded mechanics from a bunch of other games, and it never quite feels like a cohesive whole.
I also encountered a lot of bugs and accidental weirdness on my travels through the city. In single player mode, you control Mayday or Zuke and can switch between them at the press of a button, with the idle character following behind you as your invincible buddy. However, this buddy can clip the geometry of the level while you're not watching, which can lock up the game if you switch at the wrong time. I had to redo an entire boss fight because I switched to Mayday to get my health back, and she was inexplicably standing outside the arena, unable to reenter.
It's weird. I played bad games, and No Straight Roads is not that. It's a carefully crafted and lovingly crafted experience with style, humor and color to spare. It's just that all the parts that make it a video game are weirdly underrated. The city is beautiful, but you can't reach more than a fraction of it; the action is superb, but does not control well; the boss fights are massive and ambitious, but uneven, with a bunch of empty charges leading up to them.
Non-Straight Roads Review – The Bottom Line
Advantages:
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A unique aesthetic
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Much of the music is excellent; tracks that aren't meant to be
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Goofy and likeable characters
The inconvenients:
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I could have used a month or two to fix the bugs
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Mechanics aren't always obvious, especially in boss fights
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Messy and unsatisfying combat, which makes up most of the interactive part of the game
Despite my criticisms, I want to be clear: no straight road is worth the detour. The music is great, the world feels lived in for as ridiculous as it is, and the character design and art are both top notch. I feel like it could be a foundational experience for any artists or musicians who find their way there, much the same way Jet Grind Radio was in the 2000s.
It does not appear at all in static screens; you have to see it in motion to really appreciate it. It's especially cool that the game is so firmly Singaporean, with many characters using "Singlish" phrases.
It's flawed, but in an interesting way, and it's valuable. This isn't some market-tested vanilla vanilla milkshake and game that's aiming straight for the lowest common denominator or some indie project that blew up the runway. Instead, No Straight Roads' main problem is that it's so busy being an animated cyberpunk rock comedy/opera that it's not a particularly satisfying video game, and it's actually fascinating.
It is also difficult to score. Call it a 7 overall, but it really is a must play.
(Note: Metronomik provided the copy of No Straight Roads used for this review.)
