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No Straight Roads is a music-based action game about a duo fighting to save rock and roll

It was easily my game-of-the-day for day one of PAX, so I can’t wait to play the full game for this one.

No straight roads screenshot
Image: Sold Out / Metrnomoik

It wasn’t long ago when I saw a trailer for No Straight Road and thought, “Oh wow, I need this game.” This was a title at PAX West and among the first appointments that I booked, so here’s what playing it was like.

The game opens with an audition. You play as Mayday, a guitarist, and Zuke, a drummer, trying out for a program that powers the city with music. It’s immediately stylistically striking, with vibrant colors, cartoonish proportions, and exaggerated animations that are just an instant breath of fresh air in an industry filled with dark brownish games about shooting people.

Mechanically, No Straight Roads is a third-person action game. It’s not strictly a rhythm game, but enemies attack in time to the music and if you feel the beat you’ll be in a much better position to dodge, parry, and counterattack the array of assorted baddies who’d like to exterminate rock and roll once and for all.

Check out the trailer below to get a sense of what I’m talking about here

See, the city is controlled by someone who believes EDM – electronic dance music, for the olds out there like me – to be the only successful path to powering the city. You ace the audition and get rejected anyway, thus starting your question to show the council of nefarious ill-doers what for by kicking their asses with rock and roll.

The demo then throws you into combat against a cosmic DJ, a sleazy helmet-wearing bad guy whose environments and dialogue. The theming, visuals, and presentation are utterly captivating – Just real out of this world stuff, if you will. Fighting back feels snappy, responsive, and natural, and it’s the kind of combat I can see myself enjoying for the full length of the game.

Oh, and while the demo at PAX was single-player, No Straight Roads actually has assistive co-op, letting you control the second character the same way someone would take control of Tails in a Sonic title.

No Straight Roads launches on PS4 and Windows (via the Epic Games Store) for $39.99 in early 2020. It was easily my game-of-the-day for day one of PAX, so I can’t wait to play the full game for this one. Will you join the quest to save rock and roll or will you let the city fall to the insidious forces of EDM?

Does No Straight Roads sound like a game you would actually play? Or you already over the whole EDM craze. Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Jake is a writer and game designer in the suburbs of Philadelphia. He loves action, exploration, building, filling bars, and turning numbers into bigger numbers. Someday he'll release a video game.

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