I’m a Modern History buff; I love period piece-centric games and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve completed ‘Mafia’. I also love racing games, I’m a ‘Need for Speed’ fangirl, a ‘Forza’ try-hard, and 150-time ‘Mario Kart’ Star Cup Champion (at the very, VERY least). I was excited to try ‘Bootlegger’s Mafia Racing Story’, developed by Indie Dev GeekOn Games, and published by Midnight Games, as its name, synopsis and game trailer suggests this is a time-accurate, period-piece racer and right up my alley… Boy, was I wrong.

Set in the 1930s, during the height of the American Prohibition Era, we follow the story of John Hamerton, a retired mechanic, who is in danger of having his house repossessed due to unpaid taxes. He visits the bank, and they let John know he must come up with $5,000 by that night. (Just to put that into perspective, $5,000 in the 1930s is equivalent to approximately $90,000 in today’s $USD). Despite the pretty BS time frame poor, tax-evading John has been given, I loved the premise of the game, and I was excited to get started. Once I looked into the soul-less eyes of the A.I. Voice Generated Banker though, I realised I was about to be sorely disappointed.

Despite it having “Racing” in its title, Bootlegger’s Mafia Racing Story is NOT a racing game. Instead, you drive to and from your house in a point A to B fashion to one of the other 5 locations on the map for cash, and the only racing is against the clock (sometimes). Every mission was pretty much the same, drive from home to our friend’s place, drive from the gas station to your house, deliver the “whiskey” to the farm, but this time you have a 4-minute timer.

You may have either 1 police car chase you until you’re out of its radar zone, or immediately be chased from your house by 50 self-driving police cars that seemed to drop out of the sky… literally. It doesn’t help when the physics of the game doesn’t allow you to drive up a hill over 10mph, and the cops decide to T-bone you into an invisible obstacle. If you hit anything, or more commonly, if something hits you (I say “something” because no one can be seen driving the NPC vehicles with atrocious pathfinding) you lose money.

After I painstakingly completed my first mission, I was allowed to upgrade my engine, suspension, or exhaust. I had no idea if I could afford it, however, because I had no way of finding out how much money I actually had in my tax-evasive wallet. Regardless of what I tried to purchase, I still got the sound alert that indicated it worked, despite it not actually being fitted onto my car, so I had no idea.

I could also buy a new car body or customize my current one with different body kits and colours. I’ll have to ask my Great-Grandma if she remembers bright pink cars driving around back in the 1930s. I then had zero functionality of any buttons, including the Play button to continue the game, or the Main Menu button to take me back to the title screen with no title. After button-mashing my keyboard for a few seconds, “ESC” got me back into the game.

Using WASD keys or a controller; the game isn’t complicated. It is easy to pick up, but if you want to know which button or key does what, you’re flat out of luck as there is no key bind/controller mapping information or customization in the game’s settings, which you cannot access in-game, only from the main menu. The only settings you can change are the resolution, graphics quality and shadow quality.

I just want to highlight, that I have absolutely NOTHING against Indie developers using pre-built assets in their games. They’re available for a reason, and some of the best secret gem games I’ve played use Unity or Unreal Engine assets that have been creatively manipulated for amazing storytelling, but this is something completely different.

Our main character, John, looks like he time-travelled from a semi-trailer truck bounding down a Louisiana Highway circa 1998. Dressed in a denim jacket and a trucker cap, he is noticeably out of place, and not suitably dressed to be bootlegging alcohol smack-bang in the middle of the Prohibition.

On top of this, I came across lime green and bright purple Utes that were clearly models from the 1950s. The NPCs did not move their facial features when they talked, all that movement was redirected into their erratically flailing arms as the rest of their body was preparing to T-Pose and you were looking into the soul-less, emotionless eyes of your friend as he yells at you about the police coming to raid his home for illegal alcohol.

The environment looks to have drawn inspiration from ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ with its dirt roads and browning grass, but it was hard to tell if you were going to hit a rock and launch into the sky, which happened a lot, or clip straight through it, which also happened just as much.

After completing each mission, I was placed into a loading screen which I suspect was A.I. generated due to the text on the buildings being reminiscent of other A.I. generated text I’ve seen in the past 12 months. After which, the game decided to load each asset individually, creating a floating skyscape for a solid 10 seconds.

In terms of audio, I mentioned our NPC Banker at the beginning of the game had very generated voice lines. I can, however, appreciate the voice acting of our main character as you can tell he worked hard to find the line between jumped-up 1990s redneck that his character fit the look of and 1930s booze runner he was supposed to be. The music backing your drives did not fit the period. When you think of the 1930’s, you think of Jazz, maybe some early Blues, not Country Rock radio. Even if you wanted to attempt to immerse yourself a little and turn down the music, you can’t. There is no option to in the settings.

Look, I understand the means of development budgets, and I understand there maybe might have been a time-crunch. I’m sure the developers worked hard with what they have, but all it amounted to was a historically inaccurate asset flip that left a bad taste in my mouth. I can’t help but sadly feel this game was slapped together in the quickest possible fashion to get a New Year buck at the price of authenticity.

Written by: Emily France