Drive Time Radio captures the horrors of talk radio

destructoid.com:

Telling a narrative in an interactive way is something that’s still being explored and developed today. Video games have long emulated books and movies to tell their tales, both of which directly rip all control out of your hands and force you to sit and watch or, ugh, read. Part of Half-Life’s appeal in 1998 was that it didn’t do that. It let you experience the story without taking it away from you.

And for a lot of games, that was far enough. As long as you could poke at the microwave while someone spoke to you, that was interactive storytelling. Never mind that you could tell it just as easily in film.

Part of the issue is that players have a hard time sitting still when there are things to kill. When you’re a hammer, and there are nails everywhere, it’s hard to be invested in anything else but pounding.

Drive Time Radio has a solution to this: coerce the player into interacting, but trap them with the story. You’re on a long stretch of highway, the radio is playing, but your life is forfeit if you try to stop. It’s not the only way to captivate an audience, but it’s certainly an effective one.

Drive Time Radio has you starting off in a traffic jam. You pass out while waiting for people to move, and when you wake up, the highway is empty, and you’re speeding along. The radio plays your typical talk radio setup where two hosts banter about the upcoming Beach-A-Palooza Spring Break Beach Blowout. It’s your chance to win free tickets to this exciting event! And you’d better play, or else the show’s hosts are going to eat you.

You’re on a completely straight highway, but the car continually drifts to one side or another, kind of like in the legendary pain-maker Desert Bus. It requires your constant attention in order to