Sure it might seem a little bit randy from the box art, but a closer examination shows that Hooters Road Trip has only been given a "T" (Teen) rating, for what is described as "Suggestive Themes." Which means you can probably find Sears catalogs with a more prurient appeal. In fact, the word suggestive is pushing the description a little. Don’t expect much from this aside from giggling bimbos making terrible jokes. Once you get beyond the ‘racy’ elements, Road Trip doesn’t diverge from the standard PC racing game elements you’ve come to expect. Players should find that the gameplay is simplistic and very easy to understand making this something you can get right into. Hooters Road Trip is no simulator, and the game’s arcade-style approach makes for an easy to pickup game that’s not overly complex. The racing action unfolds in a predictable manner. Road Trip allows the player to race a few practice runs around the test track before setting out in the open road. Once you’ve setting in, you can then begin the road trip. Each leg of the road trip consists of several short areas that you can race on. The good news is that you can save after each segment, which means progress shouldn’t be overly difficult. You have a choice of several different vehicles at the start of the race including trucks and sports cars. The handling of each one differs but is clearly labeled on the selection screen. The game initially offers a selection of 16 vehicles but 7 additional cars can be unlocked later on. Once on the road, you merely need to pass rival vehicles, dodge oncoming traffic, and other obstacles on your way to the finish line. In order to progress through to the next level, you need to place at least fifth in the final standings. The game takes you on a road trip across the United States and there are 6 sets of Road Trips, consisting of anywhere from 5 to 7 legs each. This means that you’ll traverse many types of areas. This adds some variety to the game because it combines both street racing and off-road terrain. Despite this, most players should find the goings pretty standard.

With it’s simplistic arcade style approach, you wouldn’t think this would be a difficult title to play but there are problems with the interface that detract from the experience. Road Trip’s controls don’t offer enough precision, and the cars are generally over-responsive, no matter how you set the controllers. This means you’ll frequently spin out on the tracks and also means its difficult to keep your vehicle straight, which makes play frustrating. To help you along, you have several different viewpoints you can switch during the race. Each car has a slightly different balance which can be upgraded by winning races and buying new parts. In addition, you can also win better cars when you win races. Unfortunately, the physics aren’t very realistic and the player will find themselves crashing frequently. It doesn’t seem to matter much, because the game allows plenty of leeway to the player. You can crash several times during a race and still finish first. This eliminates the concept of challenge from the game, and seemingly eliminates fun as well. Still, this is an arcade game at heart and as such, this isn’t too terribly annoying. As you might expect, the main goal of this is to avoid the obstacles and keep from crashing, more than racing strategy. This means that you’ll spend more time and energy on this than the other parts of the race, the defining hallmark of a slapped together rush-job. It makes for a somewhat easy title to beat and most players shouldn’t have much trouble getting through even the tougher later levels. Though who would want to is another question entirely. You’d have to be pretty desperate if you wanted to sit through level after level of this in order to see a short sequence of dumb bimbos in shorts and tank tops making lame comments and giggling.

From a visual standpoint, Road Trip looks far below the average with bland textures and environments that give the game some truly atrocious frame rates. There are several different viewpoints to choose from. The ground level angles are ineffective and make the game harder to play due to the lack of peripheral vision they let you have. Unfortunately, this problem also plagues some of the behind the car angles, making it hard to see what lies ahead. It’s too bad that the game suffers so from this and your best bet is to go from a far-away angle, this also helps to mitigate the lack of detail in the vehicles and environments. While it’s preferable to play the game in this mode, it only adds to the unappealing visual presentation, making the game look terrible. Vehicle models are pretty ugly and lack detail and creativity. The courses are ugly and even the terrain can’t save them. There are several dead-ends in each course as well which only adds to the poor gameplay’s frustration. While it won’t tax your hardware, unless you’re trying to run it on a dated machine, the end result is that the game looks bland and washed-out throughout. A tad more creativity in this department would have been appreciated. Worst of all however, Hooters’ Road Trip’s embarrassing sequences with the girls are a tacky addition. This isn’t helped any by the cinemas’ short length and grainy appearance which is cheap from any way you want them to be. Far from feeling salacious, these asinine sequences only make the player feel lame for even bothering playing this title. These sequences break up the action just enough to underline the technical and gameplay shortcomings that are apparent in virtually every area of the title.

In the end, the inclusion of these sequences isn’t enough to keep you motivated to continue playing, and in fact, make you want to play less. It’s embarrassing for all involved and we have to question who this title would appeal to. It’s not sexy enough to appeal to the pervert audience, and most normal players probably wouldn’t want to be caught playing a game like this. It’s about a sexy as those ‘adult’ anime movies, which means it isn’t sexy at all. The only explanation for this title is that it’s a cynical ploy to appeal to the mass-market. Unfortunately it backfires, because the use of the ‘sexy’ sequences makes can’t mask what is a sub-par racing game. These are so short and so dull in fact, that it only makes Hooters Road Trip’s shortcomings all the more glaring. Overall, the racing is pretty awful, and we’ve played deeper, more complex and infinitely more enjoyable racing titles....20 years ago...on the Atari 2600. You can find better racing games in the bargain bins at CompUSA, where this is likely to appear very soon, if it hasn’t already, and the purely gratuitous ‘sex-appeal’ isn’t shocking, it’s pathetic. So the bottom line, this isn’t a fun experience, the gameplay is poorly designed, lacks challenge or fun and the pathetic attempt at creating sex-appeal is laughable and lame. This is trash that only hurts the reputation of the game industry and gamers themselves. We also can’t finish without condemning the despicable "caveman" approach to women, which is truly offensive on many levels, even though it’s implemented in a way that sinks ‘casual-gamer’ targeted software to new-levels of incompetence. The sole recommendation for Hooters Road Trip is that the Uninstall program works well and will get this abomination off your machine quickly. Unfortunately, you’ll probably still need a shower after erasing it.