Heading Out

I came into Heading Out expecting a racing game and got something closer to Oregon Trail with a V8 engine and a philosophy problem. That mismatch is the whole point, and once you accept it, the game snaps into focus. You play as the Jackal, an outlaw burning west across America, and the primary threat is not rival drivers or police cruisers but a creeping red mist on the horizon that the game frames as your own Fear. Every decision you make either puts distance between you and that mist or invites it closer, which gives even mundane resource choices a low-grade dread that most strategy games would kill for. The core loop runs in three overlapping layers. First, the map: you plot routes between cities, spending fuel on each leg, earning money through races to keep the tank full. Speed up between stops and the wanted gauge climbs, GTA-style, drawing police patrol markers onto the road. You can hide from marked cops by pulling off and waiting, bleeding time while Fear gains ground, or you can lean into a chase. The second layer is the visual novel strand: branching comic-book cutscenes, fully voiced, where you answer questions about the protagonist's history and psychology at the start of each run. Those answers inject personalised flavour throughout the playthrough and shape which story beats open or close. The third layer is the event deck: 133 or so unique roadside encounters where every choice ripples into the four resource stats you are juggling simultaneously: focus, vehicle health, wanted level, and fame. Star in a local film shoot and fame ticks up, but time evaporates and Fear catches ground. Every positive outcome has a timer cost, which is where the strategy actually lives. The art direction is the game's strongest card. Black-and-white ink work with sharp splashes of red, yellow, and blue, explicitly in the vein of Frank Miller's Sin City comics. The radio system is exceptional: multiple stations whose hosts react dynamically to your in-run choices, ranging from satirical talk-show parody to proper road-movie atmosphere. It is not perfect tonal consistency, critics noted the GTA-style comedy skits can jar against the film-noir earnestness, but it rarely breaks immersion for long. Where Heading Out earns its criticism is in the depth of its driving sections and the replay ceiling. The actual racing is arcade-light: gear changes, braking, navigating traffic. Unlockable cars differ in acceleration and cornering but handling feedback is floaty enough that veteran racing fans will feel underwhelmed. Rubber-banding is persistent, dialogue repeats across runs, and the overall narrative conclusion left a portion of critics feeling the payoff did not match the road that preceded it. The roguelite label is also soft: a successful run takes five-plus hours and difficulty settings let you sand down the challenge, so this is less Hades and more a one-to-two-run story experience with optional harder modes. A June 2025 PC update addressed stability and interface issues and brought console ports, so the roughest technical edges are smoothed. For the strategy-minded player who reads the tooltips, the resource web here is genuinely interesting. Fuel, money, fame, focus, wanted level, and Fear timing interact in ways that reward planning routes two or three stops ahead rather than reacting greedily to each event. The difficulty of knowing when to take a risky side encounter versus banking resources for a later act is the game's real decision space, and it is consistently engaging. Anyone who bounced off Road 96 for being too passive or off Pacific Drive for being too mechanical will find a middle path here that works.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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