With an interesting presentation and a lot of good ideas, Road 96 was an interesting hitchhiking game. Road 96: Mile 0 breaks away from the procedural elements, replacing them with rhythm gameplay.
It’s an intriguing, albeit depressingly prescient world presented in Road 96. As you play Zoe, a Road 96 character, and Kaito, a Lost In Harmony character from DigixArt, you fantasize about running away with each other from Petria under the thumb of President Tyrak. Although they have their differences, the friendship between the two friends is far and away the strongest aspect of the title.
As a Telltale game, gameplay functions like observing the environment and talking to people. Intense runner rhythm segments are interspersed occasionally. There are some outstanding visuals on these levels, and they all feel unique while using some killer licensed music. This reveals the biggest problem plaguing the game: tone incongruity.
Even though the musical sequences are portrayed as a means of escaping reality for Zoe and Kaito, they are not balanced with sobering narrative elements throughout the rest of the story. It’s one thing to discuss Zoe witnessing a terrorist attack in her youth, but it’s quite another to present it as a fun musical set-piece.
In the script itself, a rumination on class inequality is often transitioned directly into a comedy sketch, followed by a natural disaster news bulletin. Mile 0 is, to put it mildly, a mess. It happens repeatedly throughout the 4-5 hours it takes to complete the game. Though pitch-black comedy can work, Mile 0’s writing is awkward enough to make it feel accidental rather than deliberately irreverent. The result is a rhythm game with a lot of questionable writing.
Pros:
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Featured music.
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Kaito & Zoe love.
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A great soundtrack.
Cons:
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Inexpertly juggled tone.
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Subject matter too heavy.
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There’s no buffer between fun and sobering.
The overall score is 5 over 10.