TEST Hitchhiker: a disconcerting initiatory journey in VR by raising your thumb…

On the road again…

Genre Walking Simulator familiar to you? What Remains of Edith Finch, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, fire watchas much games focusing on narration and contemplation, where interaction is most often reduced to the bare minimum. But did you know the Sitting Simulator ? Hitchhiker invites you to discover it!

If the starting pitch looks simply attractive, its execution is somewhat confusing, clumsy and messy!

The story takes place in the United States, the character you play occupies the passenger seat directly. A conversation then begins with the driver. You learn pretty quickly that you have amnesia, you don’t know why you are there or in which direction you are heading! The photo found of you and your “girlfriend” in the glove compartment intrigues you to the highest degree! The driver seems to know you, without telling you the whole truth! Charged it’s up to you to shed light on your own story by collecting the clues and solving the puzzles you will encounter on your way.

First driving force of the title and main element of gameplay : the dialogues ! Choose one answer from the two given, this is what awaits you during the three hours and five episodes to be completed. And don’t rely on the consequence of your choices (isn’t Telltale wants), because none have any influence on the course of the game, except to change a single line of dialogue! Let’s be clear, some lines make you smile, some make you breathless, but others literally put you to sleep. To wake up, there is from time to time puzzles that unfortunately only have the name. For too many of them, it will be necessary to go there armed with your guesswork to solve them! In total, only two “real” puzzles are offered, which is rather light, especially for a software with “A puzzle game” in its title.

Too much ease and the cruel lack of challenge will make you wonder why the developers have decided to spend so much time developing puzzles that are not. You guessed it, Hitchhiker’s strength is not in his gameplay. Starting with the main menu, here no pointers to select choices (new game, options…) as it is done in most applications VRyou have to move your hand to access this or that choice and resume several times in order to perform an action as simple as starting the game.

Let’s talk graphics. Once launched, the camera movements are well thought out and magnify this production, although‘once inside the vehicle, a completely different reality is presented to us. The sets are empty, repetitive, the clipping ubiquitous, the textures are poor and the modeling rough… a shame for a game that calls for contemplation. This lack of finish does nothing to improve the immersion! When the mirrors don’t show your reflection, the wheels of the vehicle don’t even turn and sink halfway into the asphalt and the birds appear from the ground, the idea of ​​being faced with a beta version is sorely felt. Especially since at this precise moment of the game, we wonder if all these strange phenomena will be justified at some point by the scenario or if it is a certain unwillingness on the part of the developers to correct said aberrations ! spoilerthe second option is the correct one.

You literally have to suffer an hour of play before you start having fun!

Uneven, the rhythm certainly is! Good ideas blend in so well with bad ones thatit’s hard for us to hate or love the title once this is completed. Despite the innumerable faults, its monotony, its wanderings, the suffering of the first moments, Hitchhiker manages to take off to episode 3, which is paradoxically the least interactive of all. It makes us redefine everything we thought from the beginning, thus bringing its share of questions with the key to the haste to see the end to piece together this whole puzzle.

Hitchhiker offers, albeit rarely, great moments: the jokes of Vernthe philosophical speeches, the sublime cinematics, the magnificent and memorable song of episode 4, the multiple references to pop culture (Forrest Gump, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Twin Peaks…), the David Lynch side. Although less solid than a Vanishing Grace, this experience may still be suitable for those who know how to get past the aridity of the graphics and the gameplay. A niche game that spends most of its time wanting to offer its own version of the facts.

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