Heading Out [Review]
Heading Out is a narrative adventure inspired by movies like Vanishing Point and Drive.
Heading Out. Credit: Series Sim / Saber Interactive
Stylishly presented in black and white with splashes of solid color, Serious Sim’s Heading Out combines a visual novel adventure with OutRun style racing and a roguelike structure. While it’s inventive in its concept and presentation, the game is a bit too thin and repetitive.
You are an outlaw driver stalking the country’s highways. Known as the Jackalope by radio DJs, other drivers, the cops, and the general public, you’ve captured the imagination of the nation. You don’t know much more about yourself than the DJs who talk about you on air, only that you’ve got to keep running before your fear catches up to you and face off against the fastest driver in the world to get the answers you seek.
Heading Out. Credit: Series Sim / Saber Interactive
Heading Out is about crossing the country to get to the destination of the final race. You pick a destination city on a highway map and then control how fast you drive. The driving portion of the game only occurs during police chases or race challenges; most of the time you’ll just be a dot moving along the roads on the map. Speeding will cost you more in gas and will attract the attention of the cops.
While on the map, you may run into story events, racing challenges, or high speed police chases if cops spot you. After arriving in a city, exploring will always trigger a story event, and then you’ll usually have the option to shop, repair, or rest. You need to rest and repair to keep up your focus and car condition, but those take time, which will cause your “fear” to gain on you.
Heading Out. Credit: Series Sim / Saber Interactive
You’ll meet different people in town or on the road during story events, which are presented as comic-style illustrations with narrated prose alongside them. At each juncture during an event, you’ll have to make a choice about how to act. Your choices will affect your cash reserves, fame, or reputation; fortunately, you’re always told the effects ahead of time. Your fame and reputation will affect what kind of events you run into and what choices you’re able to make.
The problem with the game is that neither of its two parts is well fleshed out as the game tries to have it both ways, leaving both the action and narrative weaker for it. The driving feels good but those sections lack variety and significantly scaling challenge. Driving gameplay happens sparingly, perhaps because the developers realized it needed to be more fully baked. There isn’t enough there to carry a whole game.
Heading Out. Credit: Series Sim / Saber Interactive
On the other hand, the visual novel portion doesn’t pick up the slack. The game lacks a cohesive narrative and character growth for the protagonist. The visual novel side of the game is made up of disconnected random events and encounters rather than a story that builds to an earned conclusion, loosely connected by the character’s quest to beat this other driver over the game’s four acts, with each act starting the driver’s journey from the beginning. We hear radio broadcasts along the way that add color and not much else. It’s all just very thin.
I love Heading Out’s style and the works that influenced it. I just wish that Serious Sim built a beefier game of greater substance around them.
Heading Out is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 5/10
Played on: Steam Deck
