No Straight Roads… Rocks, Rolls – PAX East 2020 Preview
No Straight Roads, the candy colored battle of the bands that pits the raw, rough textures of rock and roll against the precision digital beats of EDM music, is, surprisingly, All straight roads. What I played at PAX East last week (which seemed to cover the same ground as the Paris Games Week demo did in 2018) suggests that there will be a focus on epic multi stage boss battles.
The bright and upbeat debut from Malaysian developer Metronomik games, co-founded by cousins Wan Hazmer, former Lead Game Designer of Final Fantasy XV and Daim Dziauddin, former Concept Artist of Street Fighter V was quite unlike anything else on the PAX show floor. The third person rhythm based action and presentation were reminiscent of something straight out of Tim Schaefer’s cracked noggin; cartoonish, hyper stylized, and filled to the brim with cheeky, mall punk attitude.
Players assume control of two members of indie rock band Bunk Bed Junction, the guitarist Mayday and the drummer Zeke, switching between them as strategy and style demand. In addition to their normal attacks; a series of swipes and thwacks, the indie upstarts can unleash powerful reversals, projectiles and special attacks that in my throwdown against a puny classical music prodigy and his overbearing stage mom were used to co-opt strategically placed speakers and turn them against the enemy and swing the music meter firmly toward rock and roll.
Battles play out like a tug of war for dominance between competing music genres. Fare well against your opponent and you’ll hear rock elements overtake the soundtrack but, slip up as I did, and you’ll likely be waylaid by the bass drop and drowned out by your opponent’s take on electronic dance music. It’s like fighting with my older sister for control of what to listen to in the car growing up. We’re listening to Pearl Jam, Melissa.
Emerging victorious isn’t just a matter of mashing buttons either! Each boss and each stage of their transformation as they power up (and become more desperate) presents a puzzle the player must resolve while mitigating damage and deflecting attacks like flying musical notes. At one point, the piano is held aloft by tendrils that must be blasted with projectiles to free it. It’s not just a straight road to victory.
Oops. There I go contradicting myself.
No Straight Roads is slated to release sometime this year and if the snippet we previewed is anything to go by, it’ll be a head banging good time. God, I’m such a narc.
