Rebel Trucker: Cajun Blood Money (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 0.5 stars Abysmal
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 1.8 (0.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Alex Navarro
• Reviewed on: 12/16/2003
• Released on: 11/25/2003
• Originally published on GameSpot: Rebel Trucker: Cajun Blood Money (PC) Review

The moment you open the box to Rebel Trucker: Cajun Blood Money and discover that the game actually displays two different ESRB ratings (M on the box, E on the instruction manual), you should take a moment to savor whatever slight amusement can be derived from this bizarre oversight, because this moment of levity will likely be the last one Rebel Trucker provides. In fact, this printer's gaffe is only the very beginning of a lengthy downward spiral that takes Rebel Trucker into depths that rival any of the worst games currently available on today's gaming market. Rebel Trucker is a huge mess of a game that is riddled with grievous bugs, badly designed in every measurable capacity, and completely lacking in any conceivable dimension of fun. How exactly Rebel Trucker made it onto store shelves in its obviously unfinished state is a mystery, but whatever the case, it is easily one of the worst games released this year, on any platform.

In Rebel Trucker, you play as Keri Thibodeaux, a sad-sack, mullet-sporting Southerner looking for some direction in life. Upon seeing an ad on TV advertising the glamorous life of a trucker, Keri is off to start his trucking career, and along the way, he gets tangled up with a group of Italian mobsters who run the majority of New Orleans' smuggling operations, a pair of FBI agents bent on bringing down the mob, and a pigtailed, tightly shirted Southern belle by the name of Maria Sue. The game's story actually comes into play in only one of the three basic modes of gameplay that follow the game's brief, and useless, training level. The three modes are broken up into job offers from different companies: Vieux Carre Routes, which consists of a series of short-distance delivery jobs; AAA Long Hauls, where you'll have to travel lengthy distances delivering cargo, while also maintaining logs of your rest stops, gas-ups, and weigh-ins in order to stay compliant with state trucking regulations; and Stromboli Import Export Trucking, which is the story mode.

The Stromboli missions are definitely the most involved aspect of Rebel Trucker, but to be quite frank, they're absolutely awful. Clearly inspired somewhat by the Grand Theft Auto series, the game's story missions involve delivering bribes to police officers, hauling contraband, and killing just about anyone who gets in your way. The story is told through lame CG cutscenes that are painful to watch, both because of how horribly they're rendered and because of their insipid, hackneyed dialogue. The long-haul missions seem to be geared more toward fans of simulation trucking games, but these missions are so underdeveloped and thrown together that anyone hoping for something even remotely simlike will likely just be insulted by what the game has to offer. As for the short delivery missions, they're even more tacked on, and they don't offer anything more than a scant distraction.

Rebel Trucker's gameplay is a perplexing mixture of horrible driving physics and irritating controls. When you're driving your truck, acceleration actually feels appropriately sluggish, especially when you're towing a trailer, but once your truck manages to build up some speed, realism goes flying out the window. At any speed exceeding 40mph, your truck begins to handle as though it were made out of cardboard. Slight turns result in extremely quick, sharp angles that seem like they should cause your truck to jackknife or slide out of control, but instead, you can basically swerve all over the place and never even risk losing your trailer. Additionally, crashing your truck is an absolutely ludicrous event. Except for a few sections of the environment that are destructible, running into any object in the game results in a sudden stop, no matter how fast you're going or how small or big the object is. Running into a stop sign at 80 miles an hour, in a big rig, and having the stop sign easily stop you in your tracks is at once hilarious and incredibly disappointing.

Rebel Trucker controls terribly, regardless of whether you're using a keyboard or a controller. Keyboard controls are loose and are generally unwieldy when you're attempting to steer your truck, and because of a bug in the game's controller setup, using a controller is just as bad. When you attempt to assign the accelerator to an actual controller button--instead of using the default control of pressing forward on the analog stick or directional pad--the game actually assigns another brake button to the designated accelerator, effectively eliminating any possibility of moving forward until you restart the game and reset the controls. Also, when you use any peripheral controller or driving wheel, you still have to use a keyboard for other functions, like radio control or hitching and unhitching trailers, as only the most basic driving functions can even be assigned away from the keyboard.

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