No Straight Roads Review
Last week, I mentioned that violence against American protesters was markedly worse than previous weeks, but, like the old adage says, when it rains, it pours. Not only did police kill a suspect in an ongoing investigation, but footage also came out of the police killing a man having a mental health episode back in March. Worse, Trump supporters continue to enact violence against protesters, probably because they continue to be supported by the government. With all this horrid stuff happening, please make sure to do what you can to the cause of racial justice. Also like last week, there’s no clever transition here but to say that this week I played No Straight Roads, a game about a pair of musicians fighting against a stifling techno empire.
No Straight Roads is the story of the rock band Bunk Bed Junction composed of guitarist Mayday and drummer Zuke. In their home Vinyl City, music is somehow converted into electrical power, a frankly miraculous development, but the production and distribution of this incredible resource is under the draconian control of NSR, a group of EDM artists lead by the cutthroat Tatiana. As the game opens, Mayday and Zuke are auditioning to join the elite ranks of NSR through a televised audition not unlike America’s Got Talent. Unfortunately, championing rock and roll earns Bunk Bed Junction nothing but scorn as they’re unceremoniously ejected from the competition and all rock is subsequently banned from Vinyl City. Incensed, Mayday and Zuke pledge to take down NSR by hijacking the concerts of the various members, humiliating them on live TV and spreading the gospel of rock and roll, all to free Vinyl City from their crushing authority.
If there’s one thing that needs to be good in a video game about musicians clashing, it’s the music, and thankfully No Straight Roads has some incredible tunes. The credits on the game’s soundtrack are wide-reaching, thanks to Australian video game music label Boss Battle Records, and every person who worked on it is clearly talented, based on the quality of every song. But not only does it have great music, it has an excellent variety of music thanks to the many backgrounds and styles of the NSR members. Present on NSR’s ruling board are representatives for club music, pop, classical, boy bands and more. And, because each encounter with one of them is set during one of their concerts, the music is the lifeblood of the game. The confrontations with each NSR member feel like they were built starting with the music, almost as if the songs were made first and then the encounter was shaped by them, not only in terms of how the encounter plays but also the tone of it. Enemy actions mirror the song playing over each confrontation. For example, one of the NSR members players face off against is child piano prodigy Yinu. The song playing over the fight features several chains of staccato notes, which are shown in game by a rapid assault of dozens of musical notes, each appearing with one note in the song. Later in the fight, the song has sections with loud, heavily emphasized chords which coincide with massive piano hammers striking from the sky. The music has another trick up its sleeves, and that is that each song will transition from an EDM style to rock and roll themes as Mayday and Zuke wear down their opponents. I first saw this sort of evolving soundtrack back in last year’s terrific Skybolt Zack and it works just as well here.
Not unlike Tatiana’s initial assessment, Bunk Bed Junction doesn’t measure up to NSR, and by that I mean it’s not that fun to play No Straight Roads. In interviews, developers Metronomik talked about how they wanted No Straight Roads to be a music game without being a rhythm game and they succeeded, but instead they made it a lackluster hack and slash action game. While the rest of the game is in time with the music, Mayday and Zuke move and attack however they want, which could be argued as a metaphor for their rebellion against the system but comes off as disconnected and unoriginal. Though Mayday and Zuke play a bit differently, I never needed to learn a second combat strategy. When fighting NSR’s legions of robotic drones, I was mostly mashing the one attack button over and over, occasionally jumping out of the way of an attack, in some uninspired combat. In clashes with an NSR member, I was deflated to see that basically the same strategy worked well against any of them: dodge clearly telegraphed enemy attacks, hit whatever debris they left around for ranged attack ammo every now and then, and summon attack turrets the rest of the time. It was so disappointing that the same tactics worked equally well against a vocaloid mermaid as they did against a magical piano child.
On top of combat being a drag, No Straight Roads frustrated me with its almost total lack of explanations for anything. The chief example of this is that I have unlocked six different music tracks I’ve been told I can listen to, but I don’t know how to do that because the game has said nothing about listening to unlocked music. Any time I earn a new track, I’m told by the game that I can go to the “concert hall” to listen to them, but I’ve yet to see anything called a concert hall beyond where I threw down with a nine year old. Worse, it’s possible this is yet another example of the game telling me about something I don’t have access to yet. Very often in the course of the game, players will unlock something that they are told they can use or view, but the area in which they would use or view that thing isn’t available to them yet because they aren’t far enough in the game. It’s fine if developers want to spread new features over several hours of the game, but I’ve beaten half of NSR’s members as well as a mercenary rapper contracted by Tatiana and I still can’t listen to this music. On top of that, if something isn’t usable to a player at the moment, the game’s writers need to have that in the text of that thing’s description or else they’ll go crazy like I did combing the game for something they could have possibly missed and never knowing for sure. Lastly, and this is admittedly a lesser complaint than the others, but I think it’s ridiculous that there are no reminders on screen about the special abilities I’ve equipped to Mayday and Zuke. Each of the two members of Bunk Bed Junction can have up to two special abilities at once, each corresponding to a specific button, however there’s nothing to help players remember which ability is equipped to which button, meaning the only option is to hit the button and potentially waste the ability, or to pause the game, interrupting what little flow the gameplay has, to check. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that this appears to be developer Metronomik’s first game, so I hope they improve this aspect of their craft for their next release.
All in all, there are worse games out there than No Straight Roads thanks to its excellent music, but the gameplay is lacking. I think if you’re curious about this game, or just a person who likes good music, you should first check out the soundtrack. If you like what you hear, and you can get a good sale price, you could do worse than No Straight Roads.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth playing, but not at the price they’re asking
