Free Video Game Reviews: Electric Highways

Note to blog readers: this article is a catch up of an article that was meant to go up on my site, https://nerdcircleonline.wordpress.com/. If you wish to continue reading articles by me, you might want to move over to reading the site, as the likeliness is that this blog isn't going to be updated after this article. With that said, I will NOT be taking the blog down and I will make sure it stays online should I be informed that it is due to be taken down, so you do not have to move over to the site if you don't want to.

Before I start this review, I must state that this game falls somewhat under the interactive experience banner of gaming: there’s nothing that you have to fight or kill and, for the most part, the only interactivity in the game is you moving around the game world. Because of this, it is surprisingly hard to critique this game fairly: the controls aren’t important, the difficulty isn’t important...heck, there isn’t even a story to speak of, really. All that really comprises the story is that a developer of a programme decides to give it one last go before it goes out live and...that’s about it.

Yeah, basically, all I can talk about with this game is the art style, my personal thoughts on the experience and mention a few minor issues I had with it. So this isn’t going to be a traditional review per se, more a recounting of my experience with the game. Take this for what it’s worth and consider that before you judge whether this game will be for you or not.

So, when I opened this game, I was expecting a somewhat surreal experience based more than a bit on Minecraft’s style of play (so, first person gaming with a focus on an pixel style) and...well, I definitely got the Minecraft bit, but the surreal part, if possible, went beyond what I was expecting. Part of it is the art style, which goes for a futuristic look that can, on occasion, result in some surprisingly impressive design work that goes beyond what you would expect from something that looks like something you’d expect to see in Minecraft. It’s also interesting because it goes for a 3D style, but in the Doom vein of things as opposed to, well, full on 3D. It’s really quite interesting to look at and I think that it’s pulled off surprisingly well.

The overall experience I had with this game can be best summed up as “...If this is what I’m seeing while sober, I hate to think what this would look like while you’re high”, as the whole experience of playing through the game had so many moments where I was wondering what I was looking at and finding the whole thing surprisingly intense. The standout section in this regard is easily the section where you’re in a dungeon, as it FELT like something out of an indie horror game, and even had a small moment where I went “...Well, THAT’S not creepy in the slightest!”

There are a few minor issues I did notice with the game, though. There are occasions where I was able to walk through stuff that I’m fairly sure was meant to be a solid object, the frame rate slowed down a little bit during the second to last section of the game (although I am playing on a fairly unimpressive laptop, so this is probably my laptop’s fault as opposed to a problem with the game) and it’s not a very long experience (around half an hour or so). However, none of those really detracted from the game much. Sure, I found them to be issues, but, overall, they didn’t damage the experience of the game at all. I don’t see the game having a lot of replayability, but, considering I am still wondering what I saw when this is going up, I think the impact it leaves more than makes up for it!

Overall, this is a very interesting game to experience. If you have a spare hour or so, download this game and give it a go. I can’t say it’ll win any game of the year awards, but it’s something you kind of have to see.