Hooters Road Trip

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Hooters Road Trip
Hooters probably doesn't want to be associated with this mess anymore.
Genre(s): Racing
Platform(s): Microsoft Windows
PlayStation
Release Date: Microsoft Windows
March 25, 2002
PlayStation
March 26, 2002
Developer(s): Hoplite Research
Publisher(s): Ubi Soft
Country: United States

Hooters Road Trip is a racing video game developed by Hoplite Research and published by Ubi Soft for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation. The Windows version was released on March 25, 2002, while the PlayStation version was released the next day. It is built around the license of the Hooters restaurant chain, featuring both real life and computer-generated images and video footage of its iconic waitresses.

Gameplay

The game consists mainly of races and different skill tests sponsored by Hooters Restaurants, a popular food and bar franchise in the United States that employs well-endowed women as waitresses. The different levels available in the game are based in real-life locations, such as California, Florida and Texas. The game has five different game modes: Test drive, license car, practice, road trip and custom road trip.

If you win, a cutscene showing a Hooters waitress appears on screen, and depending on the location you raced in, a girl from the corresponding state appears, for example, if the player wins a race in Florida, the player sees a Hooters girl from a restaurant in Florida.

Why It's Been a Bad Road Trip

  1. The game was released at a very bad time when the PlayStation was seeing its last years of life and the Nintendo GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 were already on the market.
  2. There is no real purpose on making a videogame based on a chain of restaurants that is well known for having waitresses wearing revealing outfits as its main attraction. It's possible that the only reason why the developers decided to acquire the Hooters license was to sell the game, as in the real game the only times when you see something related to Hooters is in the cutscenes, you can't play as a Hooters' waitress.
  3. The graphics look really ugly, the vehicles in the game look way too cartoony while the rest of the elements of the game, like environments, buildings, objects, etc. try to be realistic, making the game look bizarre.
  4. While the environments look acceptable and have a tolerable number of details on them, there are barely any distinctions between tracks, which makes the game look boring and repetitive, especially when you take in count that many of these environments are present in almost all of the many leagues where you race on.
  5. One of the worst aspects of the game is its controls. Even if you slightly touch one of the sides of the D-pad, the cars will slide way too far in the direction you wanted to turn, and since you will be constantly correcting the car as it swerves repeatedly left and right, it's a complete hassle to control the cars, and to make matters worse, some of the vehicles will slightly tilt to the sides after turning left or right, making the handling even worse and more frustrating than it already is.
  6. Besides having one of the worst controls of any racing video game of all times, the stats of the vehicles also lie about this. According to the game, vehicles with a lower level of handling will control worse while a vehicle with a high grade of handling will control much better, but in reality, vehicles with worse handling stats, such as the Kenaya, ironically handle much better and more faithful to a real car, the vehicles with high handling stats will oversteer in a really exaggerated way, to the point that is almost impossible to stabilize them instantly.
    • This said, some of the vehicles can be considered undrivable because of the combination of terrible handling controls and insane speed stats, like the Rendan.
  7. Speaking of the stats, most of them also lie and make no sense whatsoever, most of the vehicles with high handling stats are prone to oversteer, but there some cases where two vehicles with the same handling stats can be controlled completely different, the Rendan and the taxi are the best examples of this, we already talked about how uncontrollable this vehicle is, but the problem is that the taxi has the same handling stats and even higher speed stats, and even with that, the taxi is very controllable and almost drives like a real vehicle. In addition to that, some vehicles with higher speed stats can barely reach the 130 km/h, while some others with the same stats or even inferior stats can beat that without any issues, using the same example of the taxi, its max speed consists of 140 km/h, and the Gemini, a vehicle with the same speed stats, can reach up to 150 km/h, and since there are no acceleration stats, this makes no real sense in any way. Speaking of the other, there is no way that in real life a default taxi vehicle can be faster than a Lamborghini Diablo or a Chevrolet Corvette, but in the game, a single taxi can beat both of them and even other vehicles based on real life sports/muscle vehicles.
  8. The driving physics are also terrible, if you crash at high speed with some small or insignificant object like a cone, your vehicle will stop abruptly, losing its complete momentum and forcing you to move to the opposite side where the obstacle is, as for some reason your vehicle doesn't has the enough force to move that small obstacle.
  9. To unlock the many different vehicles available, you not only need to finish the road trips, but you also need to complete the license test for the specific vehicle you want to unlock, and if for some reason you decide to change the game’s difficulty level, you’ll have to go through the process of unlocking the cars for the license mode and passing the test all over again, something that is ridiculous and incredibly tedious, especially because of the terrible controls.
  10. Some of the vehicles make no sense whatsoever, like the cargo truck that you can unlock and use in the game as if it was a normal vehicle, and if this wasn't enough, this vehicle obstructs about one third part of the screen, making almost impossible to see what's happening ahead unless you're using the frontal view.
  11. The layouts of the many levels of the game are incredibly linear and poorly designed, mostly because the highways and roads are incredibly narrow, to the point that only two cars can barely fit on them, and due to this, there is very little space to maneuver on the tracks, and it only gets worse with the abysmal amount of traffic vehicles that are on the highways.
    • Speaking of the tracks, they mostly consist in flat planes with some occasional hills to potentially take your car momentarily into the air, there are no shortcuts, no different ways and no elements that could add some variation, like bridges.
  12. The AI of your rivals is incredibly poor and incompetent, it's very common to see them having troubles to deal with the outcoming traffic and sometimes with the level design.
  13. The general sound design of the game is horrible and poorly worked. All of the cars have the same ugly engine sound that reminds more of an RC car engine, and the music is not better, according to the game, it has seven original songs composed for the game, but most of the times the same three horrible songs will play in the levels over and over, and these songs are not exactly good, as they consist of 20 seconds of some random electric guitar chords.
  14. The game is incredibly short, there are only six different road trips to race on that can be completed in less than three hours and the only replay value elements that the game has to offer are the custom road trip mode and the many vehicles you can unlock.
  15. The only incentive that the game offers to you to finish the races is showing up many Hooters waitresses from the city you raced on previously, but there is no real way to know if the waitresses that appear are exactly from that city or not, and besides that, the acting of the waitresses is entirely ridiculous and cringeworthy.
  16. The PC version of the game has a lot of many technical issues, the main problems are compatibility issues with newer operative systems and frequent crashes that can occur for no apparent reason, to the point that completing a single road trip is almost impossible; however, RetroMierdas found out that when he was trying to record his gameplay of the game, the cutscenes wouldn't work adequately while recording, it took him seven tries just to record the game along the introductory cutscene.
  17. As if all above wasn't enough, the game also has false advertising. In the cover of the game, there are three cars present: a 1966 Ford Mustang, a 1970 Chevelle SS and a Dodge Viper, however, only the Ford Mustang is available in the game, the other two cars remaining are not present in the real game, not even as traffic vehicles.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. The game was released at the budget price of only 10$, and while it's still very expensive for the quality of the game, it shows that at least the developers knew what they were delivering and didn't try to rob the players at all.
  2. Even if it is repetitive, the soundtrack that plays in the main menu of the game is quite good and relaxing, reminding of something you would hear at a 24/7 store located in the middle of a road.
  3. The idea of making levels based on many of the highways located in several states and cities of the United States is quite good, even if its execution was not as good as you could possibly expect, especially if you played Cruis'n USA, a game with a very similar aesthetic and better level design execution.
  4. Despite looking repetitive for the sight, the levels have a very decent number of details, and depending on the state or city, the environment of it can change in a very natural way, for example, in the New Orleans track you will go through some swampy bayous before transitioning into the arid dunes of Corpus Christi.

Reception

At release, Hooters Road Trip was heavily panned by critics and gamers alike. The PC version of the game holds a 22/100 on Metacritic[1], while the PlayStation version holds a 30/100 on the same website.[2]

Ovaldog from GameZone reviewed the game with a 5/10 score, criticizing the poor originality of the game, the driving mechanics that make the game unintentionally hard and the graphics but talking about the number of details in the environments, the soundtrack and the quality of the cutscenes. In his verdict, he said the following: "Hooters Road Trip is a pretty good arcade style single player racer. Overall, the game is pretty simple once you get your cars set up. It's just good ol' straight up racing with the added bonus of the beautiful Hooters girls displayed throughout the game."[3]

The website Gamers' Temple rated the game with a 28%, panning the absence of the Hooters' girls in the base game, the poor and blocky graphics, the questionable driving physics and controls and the soundtrack, the only thing they liked from the game was the ability of putting your own music in the soundtrack to get rid of the annoying default soundtrack. In their final verdict, they said that "It can't really be recommended for the racing or for the girls."[4]

The lowest note of the PC version was of a 12/100 given by the website Gamer's Pulse, shortly describing: "It didn’t look good, it didn’t play good, and it didn’t sound good. You’d probably have more fun playing backgammon online with your mother-in-law."

Michael Lafferty from GameZone gave the PlayStation version a 4/10, panning the game for the repetitive nature of the gameplay, the mediocre sound design, the unoriginal concept and the problems with the driving physics, the only thing he liked about the game was the number of details in the environments, like Ovaldog from the same website. In his final verdict, he said the following: "Not even pictures/video of gorgeous Hooters girls in skimpy outfits could prevent our violent seizures and brain-hurting flashbacks when we played Road Trip."[5]

Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the gave the equivalent score of 4/10, shortly describing: "Amazingly, for a game that costs 10 bucks, HRT is not the horrific tragedy it could have been."

The lowest score was given by the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, giving the game a 1/10, shortly describing: "Horrible joke of a driving game...created for the cheesecake, and the cheesecake alone."

Videos

Longplay

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Reviews

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Gameplays

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Trivia

  • According to some of the unused images located in the game’s files, the game was originally named "Free Wheelin’ USA" before they got the Hooters license, and according to the same images, the game was originally going to have more levels. You can see these images here

References

  1. ↑ https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/hooters-road-trip
  2. ↑ https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation/hooters-road-trip
  3. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20020612090416/https://www.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r18935.htm
  4. ↑ https://www.gamerstemple.com/game-reviews/pc/320/hooters-road-trip-review
  5. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20020803191325/http://psx.gamezone.com/gzreviews/r18935.htm

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