Road 96: Mile 0 – Review

Road 96: Mile 0 is the prequel to the popular Road 96 released back in 2021.

The story of Mile 0 follows Zoe and Kaito shortly before the events of the original game “Road 96”. You’ll be familiar with Trombone loving Zoe from the previous game, but Kaito is a new central character who’s best friends with Zoe. Kaito has a few troubles, after recently moving to White Sands, and losing his old friend Aya to cancer due to the pollution in his former home town of Colton City.

After seeing Kaito meeting with John (anti-government protestor from Road 96) early in the game, you start off controlling Zoe as you try to find out what’s up with your bestie Kaito. Another thing you’re Introduced to early on is the skating mini games known as “Rides”, whether it’s Kaito on his skateboard or Zoe on roller-skates, this plays a little similar to the popular mobile game Subway Surfers, where you weave left and right to collect coins, and then jump or dodge over obstacles.

If you hit something you simply respawn and continue, so there’s no real skill required, on the rare occasion you do mess up a section a few times, you even get the option to skip it completely. but with a large percentage of Achievements based around these minigames, you’ll probably want to get an A rating (which honestly shouldn’t take you more than a few attempts) Beside the skating there’s also a variety of other small games you can enjoy, such as a few basic arcade machines, a pretty fun paper-delivery minigame that plays a little like an on-rails shooter, and then there’s the chance to graffiti a wall on your homebase, and collect extra coloured spray cans on your travels.

None of these extras are greatly detailed (with a slight exception for the Paper mini-game – which I enjoyed more than the “rides”, .and while arcade games are simply an added bonus, I would have loved to see something like a Jet Set Radio tag system for tagging posters while out and about, or maybe a little more detail possible on the limited space you can graffiti.
In all these minigames are all time sinks, designed to extend the overall game, which doesn’t like as long as the original Road 96, but with a few mini-games here and there, should stretch most people to about 6 hours.

Back to the main game and after relaxing at your hideout and the introduction to the skating game, you’ll have the choice of visiting the Park, Square or Villas, each offering a small section to explore, there’s two main chapters each with 4 sections, separated by rides. The gameplay elements between are basic exploration and chatting to people around you, but unlike Road 96, Mile 0 feels a little more limited, with often smaller areas to explore, less to discover and only a variety of collectables to persuade you to spend any more time than necessary in each area.

Graphically, Mile 0 is very similar to road 96, some good effects, and nice attention to detail even with the cell-shaded cartoony look and while there’s some nice atmospheric effects, some seem a little over-powering such as a sandstorm later in the game.
Continuing the pretty high level of presentation, the audio is very good, with a fantastic soundtrack that fits the 90’s theme perfectly as well as attention to detail and ambience to make each location feel more realistic.

There are a few repetitive soundbites in sections, but otherwise there’s little to complain about with the audio, and because of the art-direction layi out in the original game, there’s really not too much more that could be done graphically.
The “Rides” do twist the bounds of realism and some of these look great, but as I’ll describe a little later, they feel a little too detached from the real-world to be quite as powerful or intriguing as they’re designed to be.

Overall gameplay, not as narrative driven as the first game, you’ll meet plenty of familiar characters, and the layout means regardless of which game you play first, you’ll never feel too out-of-the-loop.

The “rides” (skating mini-games) as fun as they might be at times, they feel like a convoluted way to make decisions, – rather than the thought-provoking journey into the mind of the characters that they’re supposed to be.
Some flow incredibly well, and suit the thoughts, decisions and direction perfectly, but others just feel a little rushed or pointless, They’re not bad on the first play through, but you’ll probably end up replaying a few and that’ll be more than enough for most. As mentioned earlier there’s no real skill requirement for the entire game unless you’re chasing the full 1000 Gamerscore, but even with that, it’s going to be some infuriating extra hours of retreading old ground to find tapes or replaying the same rides over and over again.

I was a big fan of Road 96, and while it arrived long before we launched XboxOldies, If I’d reviewed that title officially, it would have been looking at a 80-85% rating.
Offering a constant exploration of areas, characters and their relationships to each other, and how everything fell together like a jigsaw into the overarching storyline which was fun and involving from start to finish.

With Mile: 0, everything feels a little predictable, and while it’s not bad in its own merits, I wish they’d stuck more to the tried and tested (and very successful exploration of people and relationships, rather than trying to overcomplicate the already complex character in Zoe and the thoughts of the fairly flat and predictable Kaito.

As with the previous game, your decisions through the game will help decide things, but when it’s. Prequel, and you ultimately know what happens next and it won’t be far into the game when you figure out the few variables that aren’t predefined.
So when you’re really only focusing on only the journey up to that point, for just two characters it just doesn’t carry the same weight as the original game.

The overall writing, presentation is just as well done as the first game, but the prequel setting and only really concentrating on two characters means Mile 0 is more than a few yards short of Road 96.

Road 96: Mile 0 does a good job of filling in some of the background for the original Road 96, but it’s likely fans will be left wanting a little more, as for me the rides just didn’t have the desired effect of really delving into the minds of the two characters. and with so much emphasis on Kaito and Zoe, the many other characters we know from the original never really get the limelight they deserve.

If you enjoyed Road 96, you’re probably already looking forward to exploring Mile 0, but if you didn’t find yourself captivated by the original, the addition of the rides really isn’t going to change that.

Overall, it’s great to be back in Petria, but Mile 0 left me wanting much more than it was able to deliver.

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