What's the Greatest Video Game: No Straight Roads
By imunbeatable80 2 Comments
This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.
How did I do?
Category | Completion level |
---|---|
Completed | Yes |
Hours played | 8-10 (but could be beaten in 4) |
Best Song | Any of the first three, but pressed its Yinu's |
Favorite part | When you are vibing with the music and rhythm |
Least favorite | Its probably the Rap battles.. It doesnt sound great in English, and it plays super different. |
No Straight Roads is not an easy game to define. Technically it is a rhythm action game, but not in the ways that you (or mainly, I) think of rhythm action games. Perhaps it might just be made apparent that the rhythm action game is just not one I am intricately familiar with, because when I try to think of comparisons I think of: Crypt of the Necrodancer, Thumper, or even Theatrhythm, and all of those games are so fundamentally different that they wouldn’t be an apt comparison to this game. I am guessing the game that it is most like, is probably Hi-Fi Rush, but sadly I haven’t played that game so I can’t say for sure one way or the other. So, allow me to stumble through this write-up and then everyone can just tell me in the comments that the game I am describing is a Hi-Fi Rush-Like.
The main story is not nearly as messy as I am about to describe, but there just isn’t a good short-hand for me to use that can explain it better. In this futuristic city called, Vinyl City, music is converted to power that can then be used by the citizens to power their homes and businesses. The regime in charge (also know as NSR) has installed a bunch of EDM artists to different districts who are responsible to perform in order to convert that music to energy. Why EDM? Well, they claim that EDM represents Order and Normalcy and its predictable, thus they know how much energy they are going to get on a regular basis. As you might expect the EDM power is not enough for the city to thrive. You play as Mayday and Zuke, who are in a rock band called Bunk-bed Junction, that initially start out hoping to join NSR in order to help provide more energy to the city, but are oddly turned away despite performing great during the try-outs. The leaders of NSR basically say that Rock music is dead, and they don’t want anything to do with it. So, Mayday and Zuke go out to prove that not only is rock music still viable, but that they are better than any other artist that is under the NSR umbrella.
In theory, NSR is a boss rush game. There are 6 different districts that you attempt to take over, and while there is a hub world that you can run around and explore, these aren’t really expanded worlds or levels that you need to find your way through in order to get to the boss. Since, I know someone will get me on a technicality there are “approach” levels that lead up to some of the bosses, where you do need to fight non-boss enemies, but these are rather simple and quick and help align you to the music that is going to play during the actual boss fight. Since I love comparisons, think of these approach levels like the non boss-fights in Cuphead. Yes they exist, but Cuphead is 90% about the boss fights and this game is the same. In these sections, both boss fights and approach levels, NSR controls like an action platformer. You have a melee attack, a jump, a dodge roll, and a ranged attack if you gather some ammo for it. You can parry certain enemy attacks (color purple) if you time it just right, and you will also get to upgrade your characters through a skill tree that has things like double jumps, air dashes, longer combo strings, and “finishing moves” (bigger damage hits, but don’t actually finish things) The twist here is obviously that this whole game is steeped in music, and in these instances the enemy (or enemies) attack on the beat. Whichever character you are playing on can move or attack at will, but the enemies will not. This may initially sound incredibly easy, even if you aren’t rhythmically gifted, but it can sometimes be hard to lock in to what the rhythm is for a particular boss fight. And even if you do know the rhythm you won’t instantly be dodging or parrying every attack, you still gotta work the controls to do so. It might not be easy (certainly at higher difficulties) but the feeling when you tap into the music and you found that rhythm is one of the best feelings I have had in gaming over the past year.
The boss fights are full screen fights, and while they aren’t always gigantic Dark Soul bosses, you are handling fights in a large area that is meant to be a boss fight. The area you fight in, gives weight to the boss fight and fit thematically. All of the boss fights are unique in how you approach them, and luckily most of them you can figure out without beating your head against the wall as to how to damage the enemy. For instance in the first boss you destroy planets in order for them to drop ammo for you to shoot at the boss, or transform towers into rockets to deal big damage. While in the 1010 fight, you have to attack the boys when they aren’t shielded and then either wait or rely on parries to hurt them when they are shielded up. While I died at bosses plenty of times, it was never because I felt lost during a fight, it was most likely because I wasn’t focusing on my health bar and switching between characters effectively. Which, Yes, if you are playing solo, you can swap between characters on the fly and the one you are not controlling won’t take damage. While characters will slowly regenerate their health while not in control, it does mean that you will have two health bars that you can swap between in order to beat the boss. Play with Zuke until he is at 1/3rd health, then switch to Mayday and rinse and repeat.
This game does have a co-op mode where two players can play at the same time. It has its advantages and disadvantages. The obvious advantage is that now you have two people who can dish out damage and tackle obstacles together, however if either one of the characters lose all their life then it is game over. So, while initially I thought this could be a good game to play with my kids as they get to bounce around and do their own thing, while I take down the baddies, it was far to difficult for them to get the rhythm based dodging down. There is some good news on that front. If you are playing the boss on normal and die during a fight, you can choose to instantly rez and continue from that point in the boss fight. The boss will still have the same amount of hits it did when you died, so you don’t need to start anything over, but the downside is that you will automatically be scored a C when you beat the boss and earning you the least amount of fans (more on that later). It is a very kid friendly way of still being able to play the game, but there are going to be some exceptions there. They won’t be able to tackle the boss on higher difficulties (because those free Rezs aren’t allowed) but they also won’t be able to buy a lot of the power-ups through the game. It’s still a nice compromise as I think the game is fun and the music is great to play through with a buddy, but just don’t plan to 100% the game that way.
Just listen to this great track that is for a menu for a side game
Obviously we have to talk about the music, and there is no one correct answer here. For background, I don’t normally listen to EDM music. I grew up mainly listening to Rock, Alternative, Punk, some Heavy Metal, and video game music (so Instrumental), so obviously take this recommendation with a grain of salt, but I loved most of this soundtrack, to the point that I wanted to get an actual Vinyl of it (but I wasn’t willing to pay 100$ to do so). I don’t love every song, and I think the front-half (DJ, Sayu, Yinu) of the soundtrack is way better than the back half (1010, Eve, Tatiana), but that might just be my preference. One thing cool that the game does, is that the better you are doing during the fight the music changes to be more of a rock melody rather than EDM as if you are taking over their gig. It’s still the same track, but it can sound different at parts if you are doing better or worse. You can also on subsequent visits to the boss (more on that later) you can pick different tracks you want to hear while you fight them. The enemies will still attack on their regular beat, but if you wanted to listen to only the Rock edition, or only the EDM version of a track you could. Again, music is very hard to universally say it is good or bad, like comedy in games, or something similar, and that is a make or break for this game especially when the whole plot revolves around music. I will gladly critique that there are some optional boss fights that are rap battles, which just don’t work for this game. They sound a lot better in French (which I think was probably the origin language for those two songs), but in English they don’t quite hit the same high as they are supposed to. In those optional boss battles, the game turns into a twin stick dodging mini-game where you no longer attack but try to dodge notes down a note highway using both joysticks at the same time.
Which brings me to some of the aesthetics of this game. I saw a comment someone made on a Youtube video, so I wish I could give it credit, but I’m not going to comb through it.. but it basically said that this game looks like a Double Fine rhythm game, and I think that tracks. I know there is a large group of people that might be put off by that description but I can’t think of a better way to describe the look of the game. Characters are oddly proportioned, with giant hands and feet but small bodies, they come in fun colors like Green, Blue, Orange and Red, and they have striking designs that tend to be what is memorable about them. If you were someone who maybe can’t stand the look of Psychonauts, then you might want to google these characters first before buying the game, because you might find them as off-putting that it could take away from your experience.
Here is where my biggest gripe with the game comes in, though. When you beat bosses you are given a letter grade as a score, anything from a C to an S rank. You are ranked on things like the speed it takes you to beat the boss, how much damage you take, the amount of parries you do, and your biggest combo. Your grade is then converted into fans, which is the currency to upgrade your characters. The better the grade the more fans you receive. That is not the problem, as that is pretty typical, it is also not a problem that in casual play you won’t be able to unlock every skill for every character, sometimes we have to make tough choices. What I think is crazy is that the skill tree is built in a way that they expect you to play each boss multiple times to even be able to afford some of the bigger items on the skill tree. Now you can unlock up to 5 different difficulties per boss after starting with normal (hard, crazy, parry, and perfect parry) and presumably you can then get roughly 5x the fan count if you were to get a B grade on each difficulty, but that still means you have to fight the boss multiple times. I need to take a step back and say that no skill is necessary to beat the game, so you could play each boss once and only once, get the story and still have a pretty good time. I also need to state that some of the boss battles are just better on a harder difficulty. While the track and speed is the same, the rhythm is going to be better synched to a harder difficulty even if that also means that the boss is attacking more frequently. It’s a lot like playing Rock Band or Guitar Hero on easy versus other difficulties. Yes you are still playing the notes to play the song, but it doesn’t quite feel the same when a song has a fast part and you are only playing 1/3 of that actual notes. With all that said, I played each boss (except for the last one) 3 times, I did all the optional boss fights, and while I didn’t get S ranks on every attempt I was solidly around the B or A range for most levels, and even still I didn’t complete a single skill tree (Mayday, Zuke, Together) and barely was able to purchase any skills on the final row (the one that takes the most fans). I liked this game, and dug the music while I played it, but that is a tall ask for any person.
Sure, you could say that challenge is only for those who want to 100% games, but there are some skills that just help you explore the hub world around you. The Hub world is where you get to explore Vinyl city, talk to some of the inhabitants, collect some collectables and walk from one boss encounter to the next. You can collect stickers that can be applied to Mayday’s guitar or Zuke’s drums which offer some power-ups (you can only attach a few stickers to start), there are guitar case skins that you can unlock which just add some flavor to the UI. There are also little sections that are lore building that you can access that might be behind locked doors or in tucked away areas. Some of those locked doors require a high skill to open, and while it is certainly not necessary to see it to beat the game, it’s intriguing enough that you might make a mental note to come back if you buy that upgrade. Sadly there aren’t any side quests or much you can do in the world outside of picking up collectables, so it can turn what is an interesting location, into a little bit of a slog when you are marching through the same areas to get to the next boss. It is possible to unlock fast travel, but it’s not immediate so you will definitely walk through the slums a few times before you can get it.
All this is to say, that I really really enjoyed my time with No Straight Roads. I don’t think everyone will like it, not nearly as much as I do, but for some reason the music really clicked with me, and I was bought into that world. Not every battle and song is a memorable one, and I found my excitement start to dwindle as I think the last two fights are fairly forgettable for me, but it might just be that those genre songs didn’t work for me. The game tried to spread itself out in terms of genres and you can kinda tell that some worked better then others. Oh this fight is going to be like a Boy K-pop group, and this fight is going to be more classical, so don’t let the EDM scare you into thinking its nothing but rave music for the entire length of the game. While I can confidently recommend this game to people, I would say that perhaps its best if you listen to and watch a boss fight on Youtube, I would recommend the Yinu fight on hard or expert personally.
Is this the greatest game of all time?: No
Where does it rank: I didn't have a lot of pre-conceived notions before playing this game, but I didn't think I would enjoy it this much. It's a tad on the short side, and if you aren't a completionist or someone who cares about leaderboards, you could beat this in probably 4 hours, but I easily put double that time in, and I didn't even try to tackle the hardest two difficulties. Maybe I'm crazy... wait, I'm certainly crazy but my gut has this game as the 34th Greatest Video Game of All Time. I was debating anywhere from 31st to 40th, so for those playing at home, I won't fault you if you have this a little lower, but I had a great time with this game, and I'm still on the lookout for a cheap version of the actual Vinyl the deluxe game came with.
What's it Between: No Straight Roads sits between Pokemon Sword/Shield (33rd) and Griftlands (35th)
Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.
Thanks for listening
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