Had an absolutely great time playing through this. The story is much better than I expected, and the game systems felt appreciably fresh. There's just enough realism with the car's handling and behavior to feel believable while not bogging the game down with BS.

I see a lot of reviews calling the game a roguelite, but I think it's more closely akin to an extraction looter. It's unique in that there are no "enemies" per se; it's purely you versus the environment (though 'environment' is used rather loosely here). Each individual obstacle feels fair and manageable; it's combinations of them together that create utter chaos, and it feels great. Real butt-clenching moments and it'll get your adrenaline flowing.

Some folks seem to dislike the scavenging. If this is you, I'd suggest simply not picking up everything you come across. If you stop to loot every car and every building and every crate, you'll be moving at a snail's pace and feel like you're spending a lot of time on nothing. Instead, cherry pick the good stuff, and make heavy use of your tools to get the most out of everything you stop to inspect. It's more fun (in my opinion anyway) to travel through 6-8 zones and cherry pick the good stuff than to travel through 2-3 zones and loot every damn thing; you'll return with a full inventory in both cases, but you'll have a much more exciting time if you do the former.

This game is a very capable survivors style game with a unique twist, but it has a huge problem: The first 30-60 minutes feel awful. Hitboxes are very bad, and since you're using (up to) 4 minions as your primary source of damage, who you can't directly control and who can and will die, you'll spend a number of runs feeling incredibly frustrated as your damage gets killed by what feels like very avoidable damage if only they'd stop running head-first into elite enemies, and you die to enemies whose hitboxes feel about 50% larger than they should be.

If you can get past that, the game is quite good. The metaprogression adds a lot of options for increasing survivability, and once you've got a better handle on which minions you want to use together (and have more options unlocked to use), it's a lot easier to build a team that isn't going to fall over to a stiff breeze.

The hitboxes never really improve, but it stops mattering as you get more defensive options yourself; the game becomes more about tanking damage than avoiding it rather quickly.

One area that leaves a lot to be desired are bosses. None of the bosses are particularly difficult - in fact, I'd say the level leading up to the boss is harder in every case. The fourth (and final) boss has a glaring issue, as well: It alternates between (long) invulnerability phases where it puts out a lot of damage (which is easily avoidable by the player, but which typically demolishes your minions just due to their inability to not stand in the red circles), and brief vulnerable phases where you're expected to deal damage. The problem with this setup is that it's very common, especially on higher difficulties, for your minions to be dead when the vulnerable phase begins, and by the time they've revived, the boss is invulnerable again.

Overall, the game is solid if you can get past the caveats outlined above; if you're in the mood for a survivors game that breaks the mold a bit, it's worth a buy.