An agreeably quirky rhythm-action game that channels the spirit of Jet Set Radio and Parappa the Rapper.
Given what is currently taking place in the world, now would seem to be the ideal time to release a feel-good game. That’s precisely what No Straight Roads is. A rhythm-action romp in which the action element takes precedence over the rhythm, it harks back to much-loved classics of the genre such as Jet Set Radio and Parappa the Rapper and has an offbeat provenance, having been created by Malaysian indie studio Metronomik.
Visually, No Straight Roads impresses from the start: its super-colourful cartoon-style graphics nod towards anime but also display something of a Jamie Hewlett influence. No Straight Roads follows the fortunes of two protagonists, Mayday and Zuke, who play guitar and drums respectively and have formed a band called Bunk Bed Junction (thankfully, that name marks just about the only outbreak of tweeness in the game).
Mayday and Zuke live in Vinyl City, which is dominated by an organisation called No Straight Roads, that has worked out how to turn the energy created by the city’s music scene into power, which it wields in a monopolistic manner. NSR has also all but eliminated all forms of music bar the dreaded EDM from Vinyl City, so Mayday and Zuke’s devotion to rock music doesn’t go down well.
The pair start off by auditioning for a talent show run by NSR, in which No Straight Roads’ core gameplay is introduced. That mainly involves dodging enemy attacks – which are made in time to the music – then either meleeing or shooting those enemies. The latter uses an auto-targeting system, for which ammo is only provided when Mayday or Zuke melee other objects in the environment. There are also transmitters which the pair can power up, which can deliver rocket-style salvoes or open up new areas.
Rejected by the talent show judges, who are leading lights in NSR, Mayday and Zuke set about taking them down one by one, thereby liberating individual districts of Vinyl City, in a series of long, multi-stage boss-battles. Between those sequences, there’s plenty of exploring to be done: as Mayday and Zuke collect a commodity called Qwasa, they are able to power up areas of the city and objects within it, winning fans and rewards in the process.
They also assemble a supporting cast of sympathetic and helpful characters, and acquire an array of buffs, special moves and new abilities (such as a double-jump and a ladder-climb), which introduces an element of RPG-style progression. In between the boss-battles, No Straight Roads also throws up some mini-boss encounters, which add further variation to the gameplay with some quirky mini-games.
The boss-battles themselves are long, amusing and, in their latter stages quite difficult – you swiftly learn that avoiding incoming attacks to preserve health is a huge priority. The boss-battles can all be replayed ad infinitum, with extra constraints added if you so wish; the very useful rewards on offer make revisiting them highly worthwhile. Although their checkpointing is a tad erratic – if you die near the end, you’re given one chance to carry on with health restored, before having to resume from the beginning.
No Straight Roads is an indie game, so you can expect the odd visual glitch, and there are a couple of elements which lack the polish you would expect from a big studio – in one boss-battle, for example, you must engage in some platforming which feels annoyingly imprecise.
But both visually and in terms of its gameplay, it feels utterly distinctive and impressively original. As long as you’re willing to forgive it a little roughness around its edges, you’ll find it highly amusing (it includes some great parodies of the giants of musical talent shows), a visual feast, and unexpectedly fresh and original in gameplay terms, even though it doesn’t really do anything massively new and innovative in that department. It does, however, string unusual gameplay elements together in a clever manner.
Anything that manages to evoke the spirit of Parappa the Rapper and Jet Set Radio has to be applauded – it’s a mystery as to why more developers haven’t gone back to games like that in search of quirky, feel-good gaming experiences. No Straight Roads may not be as slick and polished as the average modern game, but it makes up for that by displaying lashings of personality, exuberance and individuality. It should put a smile on the most miserable of faces.
