Car Quest

Genre: Driving Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Car Quest is a game that has you navigating a car through a fantastical low-poly environment, slowly uncovering more of the environment as you explore. It’s a bit difficult to fit neatly into a genre – it’s not really a racing game because you’re not generally required to act quickly, it’s kinda’ like a 3D platformer except there’s no jumping, it’s a game about exploration but it’s also extremely linear… I’m gonna’ go with “Driving Adventure” because that makes about as much sense as anything… although it occurs to me that “driving adventure” is just another way of saying “car quest”, so I’m not sure just how helpful that is.

Anyway, gameplay in Car Quest generally involves you being directed to collect an “artifact” in one place, or possibly gather up a bunch of “batteries” (this game’s version of coins or rings), and then upon doing so you’ll be told the next place you need to go to. You could theoretically explore, but there won’t generally be anywhere new for you to go to until you follow the linear chain of unlocking things.

I’m of two minds about how rigidly linear this game’s structure is. On the one hand, it makes this almost a meditative experience, you’re just going through the motions, generally this is pretty low-stress… but the flipside of that coin is that you’re not really making any choices or decisions, and there’s rarely anything resembling a challenge. It’s the game telling you “go here… now go there… now go here again”.

Oh, that is another thing that frustrates me – the game throws its linear nature in your face by often having you go back and forth between two points. Frequently, you’ll know that as soon as you get a new artifact, you’re probably going to go right back to where you were a moment ago, often on the other side of the map. It’s tedious and frustrating.

This is made more tedious and frustrating by one element of the game’s presentation – a floating head that is interminably babbling on. You can’t do anything in this game without him commenting about it, and those comments are pretty much always inane and pointless. It’s the sort of thing a child might enjoy, but for me it felt like nails on a chalkboard.

That’s a shame because the rest of the presentation here is quite pleasant. Oh, it’s nothing that will impress anyone – like i said, this game is very intentionally going for a low-poly look. However, this is done with a lovely color palette that pairs nicely with the new agey soundtrack to give the game a really wonderful otherworldly feel to it. It helps with the somewhat zen-like feel of the gameplay too, so it’s more of a shame that the constant narration keeps interrupting the otherwise chill vibes this game has.

In the end, Car Quest is an odd gameplay experience, and generally a pleasant one, though it definitely has some serious flaws. I wish the game allowed players more freedom to explore, I wish players were afforded more opportunities to really let loose with their car, and I wish above all else that the damn floating head would just shut up and leave me in peace. But as the game is now, it’s still worth playing just because it’s so unique.

tl;dr – Car Quest has you exploring a surreal low-poly environment using a car… although “explore” is maybe not the best word for it since the game is extremely linear and keeps telling you where you need to go with its annoying narration from a literal talking head. Despite this game’s extremely frustrating elements, it still has a nice zen-like quality that makes it enjoyable if you can tolerate its flaws.

Grade: C+

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