Here we have a bit of an odd one in AVGN history, as it wouldn’t be a game you’d expect yet it’s the perfect candidate for the Nerd’s review style: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.
This is a rather infamous PC title from as recently as 2003 (just a little over 10 years before the release of this episode) that’s barely a game – seriously, it was basically never finished!
James wastes no time getting into the basics of the game, and how heavily it’s been requested. There’s a bit of a joke here in that he plays it on his Commodore 64 (even putting the game disc into his 1541 floppy drive!) but of course it was played on a then-current Windows 8 machine.
Once he gets going, he sees what the big deal is. The game is barely programmed – there is no collision detection, no sound effects, graphics are barely done, physics is a joke and if you haven’t already played the game I won’t even tell you what happens when you try to go in reverse — it’s a level of madness all its own and discussion of it dominates a good chunk of the episode!
The joke here is that the Nerd is actually excited by all this — it’s so crazy he winds up loving it! Each level he finds something new that’s strange about the game; as he puts it “the whole game is a glitch.”
There really isn’t too much commentary you can make about the episodes content itself, as it’s really pure Nerd – he’s just rambling on about a game as he plays it, but this time, instead of being angry, he’s just in disbelief about how broken the game is!
Of course, it is a game, so there is an objective – win the race against the opposing truck which doesn’t move. This means you’ll always win the race, and get one of the most shared images online – the legendary “You’re Winner” screen.
Some time is also spent covering the fact that there were a few different builds of the game released, with a great few bugs fixed, like the opposing truck actually moving and the winning screen fixed. That’s really about it. It’s just, in its own way, a work of art.
Incidentally, James makes note of two odd quirks about this game which somewhat betray it’s original concept – Trucks are called Cars in the select menu, and when the game crashes the program file is called “CarZ.exe”
The episode ends with a VHS promo that James made for the game, as a concept work for what a commercial for the game might look like, and lastly him doing what anyone has played the game naturally tries – to see how fast you can go in reverse, which finishes with an oddly appropriate Spaceballs reference.
Final Rating: 4.5/5
This is another one of those incredibly genuine episodes, but in its own way. While it certainly isn’t a game James played as a kid – he was already finishing college when it was released – and it was a strong viewer suggestion, the general feel of the episode is incredibly genuine and it seems it gave him some great ideas to try out (the VHS commercial) and that, in the end, James had fun making this one.
It’s just a fun time, and one of the most recent episodes that I still feel a “soft spot” for.