6.6 hours played
Written 7 days ago
Heading Out is a fun game that wears its influences on its monochromatic, leather-bound sleeves. If you’re a fan of movies like Vanishing Point and Drive, then you’ll be in for a treat. While it's not perfect, it does showcase some entertaining concepts and a relaxing game loop if you’re willing to look past some underdeveloped elements.
This game is a narrative driven racer with rogue-lite mechanics and sim management. Through a four act story, you’ll play as a mysterious driver referred to as the Interstate Jackalope. You’re introduced to your main enemy, FEAR, an ever present force that chases you down throughout your journey of the 1970s Midwest United States. Your primary goal, aside from outrunning FEAR, is to find the world’s greatest driver and challenge them to a race. How you get to them and what decisions you make along the way are entirely up to you.
Each run will begin in Michigan, from there it will take your driving and management skills alongside your morality to get to the greatest driver. Sadly most of the eastern states are missing from this adventure, so no races in New York, Virginia, the Carolinas, or Florida here. Through your journey you’ll have to manage your time, money, car fuel, maintenance, and focus to survive the drive. All the while, FEAR will slowly creep behind you as an ominous red mist, cutting off any roads you’ve previously traveled. You’ll have to plan your journey accordingly, making sure to pick up any items you need as well as resting at motels or repairing your car. You’ll also receive delivery jobs or bets along the way to certain cities, meaning you’ll have to be flexible with your route if you want to earn some extra dough.
As you traverse, you encounter new dilemmas along the way portrayed through visual novel cut scene. A narrator will explain the situation and provide any available options. Typically these decisions will show what you stand to gain or lose, but on occasion can keep both outcomes a mystery. This slightly weakens the decision making aspect as you’ll likely just choose the option that results in the best items or gains you more fame and reputation. Later encounters do balance this better by having you sacrifice one of your resources for another. The artwork for these scenes are beautifully rendered by 2D artist and illustrator Aleksandra Cebula who masterfully captures grittiness and realism in a comic book style reminiscent of Sin City or 100 Bullets.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DRIVING? This is where the majority of my criticism lies as the handling and physics of these vehicles is rather bland and mediocre. This game is more arcade focused, trying to capture elements of Need for Speed The Run and the older Driver franchise. It is NOT a sim racer, so don’t expect a game akin to Assetto Corsa or Gran Turismo.
The handling itself is serviceable, but the physics are rather floaty. Cars tend to under steer quite often and not in a satisfying enough way. You feel both heavy and light at the same time. Counter steering is present, but it's not emphasized enough to be relevant. In the options menu, you can select between a manual, without clutch, or automatic gearbox. For my play through, I chose manual and was slightly disappointed by the feel of shifting between gears. Engine whine is tuned down slightly, so I couldn’t rely on sound to tell me when it was time to shift. When approaching a corner, I did feel like I had more control over the turn when downshifting, however upon exiting I didn’t notice a major increase in acceleration compared to automatic. In that sense focusing on your RPM and timing your shifts do not play a major role in handling, so it's up to preference. One other note is that when I needed to reverse, I had to go down the gears sequentially before I was able to back up. Slightly annoying, but that is what it is.
The damage model is okay. Upon crashing or taking a big hit, I always felt like the damage I incurred and the crash I had never matched up. At most I would lose a bar or two off my condition meter. This might be based on difficulty, as I played on balanced, but I’m not certain. Visually your car might have a few bumps or scrapes, but the vehicle always maintains its form. The headlights and taillights can also be taken out and smoke may bellow out from your engine as well. Handling can be affected slightly if enough damage is taken, but none of this felt severe. Overall, it's passable.
There are four playable vehicles, three of which can be unlocked upon the completion of each act. All of these cars are about the same with minute differences in handling, gearing, and acceleration. All of them can only reach a top speed of 150 MPH, and none of them can be customized or tuned. I don’t find this to be a deal breaker, but it would have been nice to have tuning available.
Events you can partake in include racing, with one or up to three opponents, police chases, traffic jams, or chill races. All these events feel about the same as you’re mainly going from point A to point B. The tracks themselves feel about the same to one another as some roads and shortcuts start to look familiar after a few play throughs. I’m not sure if these tracks are randomly generated with different parts, but there weren't any standout landmarks that I could point to that made one track feel different from another. It's rather disappointing for a game about long cross country road trips.
The last major element of this game is the radio. At the start of a run, you’ll be asked some short questions about yourself and you're free to respond honestly or choose randomly. This is a little way the game tries to personalize the journey to you as different talk show hosts will discuss the topics you select. I have to be honest that this is the weakest element of the game as the writing isn’t all that strong and can be cheesy at times. I also felt like some of the VAs’ lines sound rather forced and don’t roll off as naturally. Thankfully you’re given the option to skip these broadcasts and they only appear at the end of events or during certain points in your journey. So they don’t overstay their welcome and can be ignored with no repercussions. On the other hand is the music, which is a fun original soundtrack featuring folk, rock, funk, and ambiance. There’s not a lot of standout tracks, but it's a welcome inclusion nonetheless.
Performance wise the game ran smoothly with few issues. Load times were fair and the only major glitch I encountered twice was the sky box freaking out with fast moving clouds at the completion of a race. Worth a note if you’re someone who's photosensitive, but this was a rare occurrence.
Overall I did enjoy my time with Heading Out. While its execution of some elements can be rather weak and not fully developed, the game definitely has a lot of heart to it. It feels like something that would fit right in on the Xbox Live Arcade back in the day. I had fun managing my resources and being forced with these tough moral decisions. And while the driving definitely could have been more exciting, it did get the job done and never got to an annoying point where I didn’t want to continue. There’s a good amount of replay value here if you want to find all the encounters and collectibles. However after six to seven hours of game play and completing the main story, I felt like I had experienced everything the world had to offer.
TL;DR: As long as you know what you’re getting into, then you’ll probably enjoy this game. It's not a masterpiece, but for what it accomplishes I think it can be worth your time if you find the concept interesting. Final score: 7/10, wait for a sale
