Road 96 is a clever game that can feel a bit messy at times. Set in Petria, a totalitarian state with an American twist, it follows a group of teenagers who strive for a frontier and a better life. Even now, I’m a little dazzled thinking about the whole thing: One by one, you’re taking these teens from the depths of the country and making them slog their way to potential freedom. Hitchhiking, hiding in a truck, stuffing in the back of a police car, every attempt has a beginning and an end, and you’ll do it all over again with a new protagonist.
The hook — and this is a good one — is that these separate attempts will overlap in terms of who they touch. So you’ll run into the same truck drivers, cops, and bank robbers over and over again at different points in their own stories. During gameplay, a rich portrait emerged, and even looking back, I’m not sure exactly what portrait it was. Petria itself? the human spirit? The charm of road movies in the 90s? Regardless, it’s vivid, sympathetic, ambitious, and surprising, a perfect match for the game’s sunburnt, rough-textured art style.
Now Route 96: 0 miles. It’s a prequel to the first game, and it can feel a little messy at times. In fact, I think it’s a mess — but I’m not sure it’s necessarily a bad thing. But why the mess? I wonder if the miles have the same blockbuster energy as Route 96 here, but lack the endless score and emphasis of a trip to the frontier. This is the moment before everyone starts fleeing, so the game’s zany enthusiasm for strange encounters and outlandish narration has to work within bounds. It was a Catherine wheel stuck in its starting position on the fence, and it sparked and crackled. This is a cat trying to get out of a duvet.
Mile 0 follows two teenage friends, Zoe (who will be familiar to fans of Route 96) and Kaito (who won’t). Zoe is the daughter of a minister in Petria’s corrupt government. Kaito’s parents work for The Man and live in a basement apartment. They were united by a love of skating and dropping out of school, and perhaps a childhood warped by an apathetic regime, albeit in different ways. But as the game begins, they don’t really know each other. Kaito is on the brink of a revolution. Zoe is about to understand why some people might want a revolution. What follows in the game is their journey from these points.
kind of. What actually ensues is an engrossing mix of life-is-weird-style dialogue as the two teens work out the outlines of their relationship, a few cameos on Route 96 itself, and a series of mini-games that scatter the action. One minute they’re talking about Zoe’s missing mother, and the next they’re redecorating their sloppy headquarters on a plywood construction site. They talk about inequality and wreak havoc on local Tai Chi groups. Your favorite truck driver from the first game shows up with a mysterious agenda, and then you get a Connect Four game.
And ice skating. Lots of skating. Year 0’s big moments come in elaborate skating challenges as you traverse landscapes built from your characters’ dreams and emotions, collecting chips and avoiding danger. So much fun: dodge, jump, change lanes, dodge fallen trees, broken roads, and the government statue’s grippers come to life. It’s not always responsive to the controls, but it has friendly reboots and a real sense of flair and drama.
In retrospect, it was really a bit like being in a musical, the kind where there’s enough time between big numbers to make you forget that it’s a musical in the first place. Everyone gets upset, something gives up, and you get a song! You think: oh yes, this does happen here doesn’t it? Zoe and Kaito will gradually realize something, or play a prank together, or plan to fight back against the regime, and suddenly it all starts and we are traveling through a world of colorful imagination.
Sometimes this works. There’s a lovely early moment where the two travel through the imagined paradise of a nearby city, and then through the ugly reality behind the hype. Moments later, Kaito imagines his journey to freedom as an endless journey through a snowy forest: we have time to witness his excitement. At times, though, there’s a sense that the game doesn’t define its own boundaries. It’s all filtered through in this weird, slapstick, totalitarian world where the dictator guards his office safe with an elaborate laser maze and the bumbling regime bodyguard is hopelessly in love with the local TV star. .
As the narrative draws to a close, these odd pitch jumps become more disorienting, and so do the player’s characters. Throughout the game, I nudged two small gauges on the screen, one for each of the main characters, choosing dialogue options that would theoretically bring Zoe and Kaito closer to some kind of understanding. But halfway through the final scene, I found that, for all my work, I didn’t really understand anyone’s motivations for coming to this glorious and bizarre conclusion. The point here is to play the game multiple times and get different endings. It felt like some kind of triumph, I guess, and I’m still confused by the ending I got the first time.
The thing is, as weird as it all is, I suspect there’s nothing weirder in Mile 0 than totalitarianism. I’m tempted to say that Mile 0 can get away with any whimsy, as the president’s lawyer holds a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, which is inevitably located next to a sex shop, and the strange elements of the crematorium Mile 0 is right A reaction to this, or a reaction to authoritarianism warping people into strange shapes? I have no idea. But I’m going to keep thinking about what I’ve been through, I think, and trying to make sense of what I’m witnessing here.
iGamesNews
