Preserve Driving is an evocative turn-based sim/role-playing sport about happening highway journeys as a shiftless youth within the early 2000s. However maybe the Swedish builders at YCJY Video games have been adopting the attitudes of turn-of-the-millennium slackers just a little too keenly after they have been making it — as a result of the sport design subscribes to the notion that, whereas driving drunk is a catastrophically unhealthy concept, driving whereas excessive is principally nice.
In Preserve Driving, you don’t management the automotive, however as an alternative handle your assets as you cruise throughout the nation on randomized long-haul highway journeys. The important thing assets are cash, fuel, your vitality as a driver, and the sturdiness of your getting old automotive. Street occasions — potholes, an argument between your hitchhikers, birds on the highway that gained’t transfer — can sap all of those assets dramatically in the event that they’re not dealt with properly. You might be additionally topic to all kinds of standing results utilized by conditions or objects: glad, unhappy, pressured, hungry, impressed, and so forth. The icons of those have crimson borders in the event that they’re destructive standing results, and inexperienced if optimistic. Two standing results that may be gained simply by consuming objects out of your stock are “drunk” and “excessive.”
Drive whereas drunk, and never solely does the entire display undertake a queasy, seasick roll, however highway occasions turn into dramatically more durable. The variety of threats to your assets will increase twofold, nearly all of them are set to assault each flip, and the period of time it’s important to select your expertise every flip goes from principally infinite to mere seconds. It’s a catastrophe. I sank one can of beer in-game earlier than a brief drive and, whereas I did make it to my vacation spot, I did so with no fuel, a automotive that was falling aside, a stack of destructive standing results, and solely cents to my identify — so I needed to name my mother for money anyway. Oh, the humiliation.
In case you handle to discover a black market vendor you may also purchase some weed. (As an apart — I’ve by no means been so shocked to come across a gun on the market in a online game earlier than. In Preserve Driving’s comparatively chill world, it’s scary.) I purchased a few joints and tried one. This utilized the “excessive” standing impact, which — slightly pointedly — has a impartial, grey border. It’s the one impartial standing impact I’ve encountered within the sport, and it doesn’t actually do something, apart from additionally apply “hungry,” (as a result of munchies, after all). You may drive whereas excessive and it’s completely nice.
It’s humorous, and it completely matches the sport’s worldview. However is it a horrible double-standard? I assumed so — hashish vastly impairs response time, simply as alcohol does. This medical paper, reviewing the proof of many different research, discovered that “marijuana causes impairment in each efficiency space that may moderately be linked with protected driving of a automobile.” However, to be honest, it additionally discovered proof that hashish customers — very a lot not like alcohol customers — are likely to overestimate how impaired they’re from being off their faces, and compensate by driving extra fastidiously, leading to fewer accidents. So perhaps Preserve Driving isn’t so unrealistic.
That’s not precisely a advice, although, is it? (The paper recommends excessive folks ought to have a delegated driver, or wait a minimum of three hours after smoking earlier than assuming command of a automobile.) And given how lengthy it takes me to decide about what sort of tea I would like after I’m stoned, I’m undecided I ought to even play Preserve Driving whereas truly excessive. Keep protected on the market.
