Highway Noir Review

Highway Noir is an arcade-style driving game developed and published by Archangel Softworks. Here, you play as the best driver in the Major Crimes Agency… that is, until a mission goes wrong and you’re fired, forcing you to make ends meet via shady contracts that need your expertise.

However, one day, you are contacted by someone named Merlin, claiming they know what really happened on that night and can get you the revenge you seek. Now you’ll need to race through the city, avoiding the law, and fighting off your former employer to take down the conspiracy that ruined your life. Will this tale end in the destruction of the MCA or as another cautionary tale of the failings of revenge?

I like the story for what it is. I don’t want to get into much (it’ll spoil some surprises), but it does deal with fairly real themes that become more relevant as time goes on. I was certainly surprised to find out there’s voice acting in this game, and it’s fairly decent, too. I found myself looking forward to seeing the next cutscene.

As for the graphics, it does a lot with its fairly simplistic art style. A vast majority of the game is in black and white, which makes important elements stand out more, like the rear lights of a car or objective markers. It also helps differentiate your vehicle from everything else, which is necessary considering how heavy traffic gets in the later levels and how you have to keep up your top speed.

As for the soundtrack, though… to be honest, I wasn’t exactly listening to it. For one thing, you’ll probably be too focused on the road to notice the bumping beats, but also, I just didn’t hear anything I’d like — it’s mostly an electronic playlist with songs that failed to get me super-hyped. As such, it’s background noise more than anything.

Now let’s get driving! There are two main modes: Campaign and Instaplay. The former is where you’ll experience the story, while Instaplay is where you can create and play whatever scenario you want. I’ll be focusing on the Campaign for this review, as it’s required to unlock stuff for Instaplay.

In this game, you’ll be taking contracts that’ll require you to speed down highways, avoiding innocent drivers and dodging or destroying anything else in your way. The controls are fairly simple, only used to accelerate, brake, and drive left and right. However, given the fact that you’ll need to watch out for other drivers, law enforcement, or whatever the heck the MCA is deciding to throw at you, things get a lot more complicated real quick. There’s nothing like speeding down the road at 400+ kph while dodging insanely packed roads, while also trying to not get caught.

However, some contracts will have police presence, or you’ll need to take down a specific target. You’re going to need to stop them somehow, but ramming into them will just wreck your car. Instead, you should be pitting them by driving into their back wheels, causing them to flip over (complete with slow motion!). It’s a little finicky to do because I often found myself needing to slow down, but it does feel good to take out all your pursuers, allowing you to focus on the main objective.

Between your law-breaking, revenge-driven escapades, you’ll be in your garage, where you can buy, customise, and switch cars or take contracts at the Planner menu. Most jobs aren’t done right then and there, though, as they’ll often take place at a later date. You’ll need to schedule these ahead of time and take into account the condition of your cars. Any damage you take during a contract doesn’t get repaired unless you take the day off, so choosing the right car and planning ahead will be necessary.

Completing contracts will earn you cash and reputation, with the riskier ones with more police or MCA presence giving out more. Reputation will unlock harder jobs and new cars, which you can then purchase with your money. There’s nothing else you can do with cash, though, so it eventually feels like another number to boost up.

Some missions can be frustrating, taking forever to complete or ending in an unwinnable state. Sometimes I’d get stuck between cars, which was a death sentence. Luckily, you can restart missions with no penalty, but if it’s part of the story, you’re going to have to listen to all the dialogue again; there’s no skipping it as far as I can tell. Also, you can cancel contract missions (at the cost of Rep), but if a story mission is available, you can’t do anything else until it’s completed.

I also found the customisation to be fairly lacking. You can only change the body paint and pattern, and there are very few options to choose from. If you want a more colourful paint job, you either have to choose between the LGBTQ+ Pride Flag or Disability Pride Flag. Cool additions, by the way.

Speaking of, there are quite a few Accessibility options to help out if you have a specific condition that affects your gameplay: change the colour of markers, make the UI larger, add tone tags to subtitles, or even have a black-on-white UI instead of white-on-black. Although I don’t really need these features, it is very appreciated.

But this all doesn’t matter if the game runs like garbage… but luckily, Highway Noir didn’t have any hiccups. I didn’t suffer any frame drops, and although there were some jittery car crashes, I didn't experience anything else that would affect my enjoyment. Really, my biggest issue is the aforementioned scenario where I’d get stuck between cars.

Overall, I found Highway Noir to be a great little game to have. Though lacking in some areas, with missions that may take too long, it has a compelling story and exciting contracts that’ll make you want to merge without looking. Y-You shouldn’t, by the way. I don’t want to be blamed for scratching some paint.