Hold Driving is an evocative turn-based sim/role-playing sport about happening street journeys as a shiftless youth within the early 2000s. However maybe the Swedish builders at YCJY Video games had been adopting the attitudes of turn-of-the-millennium slackers a bit of too keenly after they had been making it — as a result of the sport design subscribes to the notion that, whereas driving drunk is a catastrophically dangerous concept, driving whereas excessive is principally fantastic.
In Hold Driving, you don’t management the automotive, however as a substitute handle your sources as you cruise throughout the nation on randomized long-haul street journeys. The important thing sources are cash, fuel, your vitality as a driver, and the sturdiness of your growing old automotive. Highway occasions — potholes, an argument between your hitchhikers, birds on the street that received’t transfer — can sap all of those sources dramatically in the event that they’re not dealt with effectively. You’re additionally topic to all types of standing results utilized by conditions or objects: completely satisfied, unhappy, pressured, hungry, impressed, and so forth. The icons of those have pink borders in the event that they’re unfavourable 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 screen undertake a queasy, seasick roll, however street occasions turn into dramatically tougher. The variety of threats to your sources will increase twofold, virtually all of them are set to assault each flip, and the period of time you need to select your abilities 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 unfavourable standing results, and solely cents to my identify — so I needed to name my mother for money anyway. Oh, the humiliation.
Should you handle to discover a black market seller 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 Hold Driving’s comparatively chill world, it’s scary.) I purchased a few joints and tried one. This utilized the “excessive” standing impact, which — quite 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, aside from additionally apply “hungry,” (as a result of munchies, after all). You may drive whereas excessive and it’s completely fantastic.
It’s humorous, and it completely suits 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 fairly be linked with secure driving of a car.” However, to be honest, it additionally discovered proof that hashish customers — very a lot in contrast to alcohol customers — are inclined to overestimate how impaired they’re from being off their faces, and compensate by driving extra rigorously, leading to fewer accidents. So possibly Hold Driving isn’t so unrealistic.
That’s not precisely a suggestion, although, is it? (The paper recommends excessive folks ought to have a chosen driver, or wait at the very least three hours after smoking earlier than assuming command of a car.) And given how lengthy it takes me to decide about what sort of tea I need after I’m stoned, I’m undecided I ought to even play Hold Driving whereas truly excessive. Keep secure on the market.
