RoadOut Is Basically GTA In The Apocalypse If Everyone Involved Had Brain Damage

“RoadOut feels like somebody gave a meth-addicted scrapyard owner €40, three energy drinks, and complete creative freedom. Which, to be fair, is how most great things are invented.”

TL;DR

• You play Claire, a wasteland mercenary doing black market jobs for gangs and factions instead of pretending to save humanity for free like some sort of emotional intern

• NOT a heist game. No vault robberies or Ocean’s Eleven nonsense. This is crime-by-contract chaos

• Driving feels like wrestling a shopping trolley through a tornado, but eventually becomes weirdly addictive

• Combat is messy, violent, fast and surprisingly satisfying once your brain adapts to the apocalypse nonsense

• The world is packed with gangs, cybernetics, AI insanity, murder contracts and enough desert lunatics to fill an Australian parliament

• Feels like GTA, Mad Max, Fallout and Zelda got trapped in a radioactive garage together for six years

• Rough around the edges, but full of personality instead of corporate beige sludge

The Dead Zone is full of gangs, murder contracts, exploding vehicles and morally bankrupt lunatics. Which means if RoadOut’s wasteland filth scratched your criminal little brain correctly, our GTA Online Crime Empire Guide is basically mandatory reading. It’s the difference between surviving the apocalypse and becoming roadkill with opinions.

Then again, maybe you prefer your chaos with more helicopters and significantly worse financial decisions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rez0imLblhs

RoadOut Review: GTA, Mad Max And A Shopping Cart Full Of Meth Collided In The Desert

There are games that know exactly what they are.

Then there’s RoadOut.

A game so gloriously confused it feels like somebody kidnapped three developers at gunpoint and forced them to build a post-apocalyptic crime RPG inside a garage powered entirely by Monster Energy and unresolved anger.

Half the time it wants to be Zelda.

Half the time it wants to be GTA.

And the other half it wants to be Mad Max after being punched repeatedly in the face by a demolition derby announcer named “Crusher Steve.”

That is three halves.

Which already tells you everything.

And somehow…

it works.

Not in a polished AAA “carefully focus-tested for emotionally exhausted office workers” kind of way.

No.

RoadOut works the way a rusted flamethrower works. Dangerous. Unstable. Probably illegal in fourteen countries. But when it starts roaring properly, you suddenly understand why civilization collapsed.

Welcome To The Dead Zone, Population: Criminals And Weirdos

You play Claire.

Not a noble hero.

Not a morally conflicted sad dad.

Not a police officer with a divorce and a coffee addiction.

Thank Christ.

Claire is essentially a wasteland contractor doing black market jobs for gangs, factions, mercenaries, lunatics and people who probably smell like gasoline and expired ham.

You take contracts involving sabotage, murder, delivery work and faction operations while driving around a giant irradiated hellscape full of rival gangs and cybernetic freaks.

So naturally, CRIMENET immediately sat up in its chair like a raccoon hearing a bin lid open at 3AM.

Because THIS is our sort of employment market.

RoadOut understands something modern games often forget:

Crime is fun.

Not real crime, obviously. Real crime is mostly paperwork and disappointing footwear.

Videogame crime.

The glorious kind where you turbo-boost through the desert firing missiles at a psychopath in a dune buggy while carrying suspicious cargo for people called things like “The Rust Vultures.”

That’s entertainment.

CRIMENET runs on caffeine, poor life choices and one deeply concerning obsession with criminal videogames. If this review saved you from wasting money on corporate sludge and instead guided you toward turbocharged wasteland felony simulator nonsense, you can back the operation through Ko-fi.

Think of it less as a donation and more as funding independent criminal journalism before another AAA publisher releases “open world crafting survival extraction battle pass simulator 9.”

The Driving Feels Like Wrestling A Shopping Cart During An Earthquake

The driving in RoadOut is fascinating.

Not good.

Fascinating.

Your car handles like a supermarket trolley possessed by a Victorian child ghost. You turn left and the vehicle responds five business days later after consulting management.

At first I hated it.

Then something strange happened.

I adapted.

Like a desert rat learning to survive nuclear winter by eating drywall and hatred.

Eventually the chaos becomes part of the experience. You stop trying to “master” the handling and instead begin spiritually negotiating with the vehicle.

“Please turn.”

“Please stop exploding.”

“Please stop hitting rocks the size of Belgium.”

And when you finally nail a drift through a wasteland ambush while machine gun fire lights up the screen like Birmingham on New Year’s Eve…

you feel like an absolute king.

Combat Feels Like Somebody Punched Hotline Miami Into Fallout

On foot, RoadOut becomes this weird twin-stick dungeon crawler where you’re smashing enemies apart, rotating environments, looting materials and crafting enough chemical nonsense to get permanently banned from several pharmacies.

The combat is fast, messy and occasionally held together with duct tape and pure optimism.

Which fits the setting perfectly.

You block attacks, fire guns, swing melee weapons and dash around like a caffeinated raccoon trapped inside a microwave.

And honestly?

The roughness adds charm.

Modern AAA combat often feels clinically sanitized. Like it was designed by twelve consultants in matching sneakers who use words like “engagement metrics.”

RoadOut feels dangerous.

Like the game itself might suddenly stab you for spare scrap metal.

That’s infinitely more memorable.

The Story Is Completely Insane

The world is ruled by AI.

There are clones.

Cybernetics.

Factions.

Desert wars.

And Claire slowly discovers her existence may be tied to the origins of the AI controlling everything.

Which sounds dramatic.

But because RoadOut presents all this while you’re simultaneously running over mutants in what looks like a weaponized lawnmower, the whole thing feels delightfully unhinged.

It’s like Blade Runner got blackout drunk in Nevada and woke up inside Twisted Metal.

The Real Beauty Of RoadOut

The real magic here isn’t polish.

This game is not polished.

This game looks at polish the way a raider looks at tax forms.

The beauty is personality.

RoadOut has identity.

It has grime under its fingernails.

It has weirdness.

It has confidence.

Every second feels like the developers genuinely wanted to make something cool instead of something “safe for brand partnerships.”

There’s no corporate smell here.

No HR-approved emotional support dialogue.

No twelve-minute cutscene about friendship while a ukulele cries softly in the background.

Just wasteland lunatics doing crime with cars.

Magnificent.

The Problems

Let’s not pretend this thing is flawless.

The controls can occasionally feel like your keyboard has suffered emotional trauma.

Some systems are messy.

The UI sometimes behaves like it’s actively hiding information from you out of spite.

And parts of the game absolutely scream “indie budget.”

But honestly?

That almost helps.

Because RoadOut feels handmade.

Like somebody actually cared.

Which immediately puts it ahead of half the gaming industry currently producing live-service slop with the nutritional value of wet cardboard.

Final Verdict

RoadOut is not a masterpiece.

It’s better.

It’s memorable.

And in 2026, that’s rarer than a Ubisoft executive admitting a mistake.

This is a dirty, loud, chaotic wasteland crime RPG filled with gangs, murder contracts, turbocharged nonsense and enough personality to power an entire AAA publisher for six years.

If you want polished perfection, go play something with battle passes and emotional damage tutorials.

If you want to drive through the apocalypse doing illegal jobs for desert lunatics while your car handles like a drunken refrigerator being pushed down a staircase…

RoadOut is absolutely worth your time.

CRIMENET Verdict

CRIME: YES

HEISTS: NO

PLAY AS VILLAIN: CLOSE ENOUGH

FUN: ABSURDLY YES

RoadOut feels like GTA’s unemployed wasteland cousin who lives in a trailer, sells stolen car parts, and somehow ends up being the most entertaining person at the party anyway.

If you enjoy watching the gaming industry drive directly into a concrete wall at 140 km/h while executives insist everything is “performing strongly,” join This Week in Crime below. Every week we expose terrible updates, uncover the best criminal money methods, roast corporate nonsense and report on villain games like proper underworld journalists.

Mainstream gaming news is written like airline safety instructions. Ours reads like intercepted mob communications.

FAQ

Is RoadOut an open world crime game? RoadOut is a post-apocalyptic action RPG with open exploration, faction systems, black market contracts, vehicular combat and dungeon crawling. While it is not a full sandbox crime simulator like GTA, the game heavily revolves around criminal jobs, gang activity, sabotage missions and mercenary work in a lawless wasteland.

Can you play as a villain in RoadOut? You play as Claire, a mercenary surviving through black market contracts and faction work rather than traditional heroism. The game does not force a “save the world” morality angle, which gives it a strong villain-adjacent CRIMENET vibe. You spend most of your time helping gangs, violent factions and suspicious wasteland operators instead of protecting innocent villagers with a wooden spoon and emotional trauma.

Does RoadOut have heists or robberies? RoadOut does not currently feature confirmed Payday-style heists, bank robberies or large-scale crew planning mechanics. The criminal gameplay focuses more on sabotage, delivery contracts, gang operations, combat missions and survival jobs across The Dead Zone.

Is RoadOut more like GTA or Fallout? Honestly, it feels like GTA, Fallout, Mad Max and an arcade racing cabinet got locked inside a radioactive garage together for several years. The criminal contracts and driving chaos lean toward GTA, while the wasteland setting, factions, crafting and survival atmosphere feel much closer to Fallout.

Is RoadOut worth buying? If you enjoy weird indie games with personality, chaotic vehicle combat, criminal undertones and post-apocalyptic madness, RoadOut is absolutely worth a look. It has rough edges, strange driving physics and some indie jank, but it also has far more identity than many giant AAA games currently being mass-produced like microwave meals for emotionally exhausted accountants.

What makes RoadOut different from other indie RPGs? Most indie RPGs today feel like they were designed by sad librarians trapped inside coffee shops. RoadOut instead throws you into a violent wasteland full of gangs, turbocharged cars, cybernetic weirdos and morally questionable contracts. It feels dangerous, unpredictable and slightly unstable, which is exactly why it stands out.