

The primary objective of every mission is to eliminate a number of computer-controlled enemies using various weapons to deplete their health meters. The game's main single-player mode has the player take control of one of 11 initially-available vehicles in order to complete a linear series of stages. Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012 shares many gameplay elements with other titles in the vehicular combat genre, specifically the Twisted Metal franchise. The head-up display shows the player's weapons, cash, tourist passenger, and both a map and message with remaining enemies. The player takes a tourist to a photo op. Impressions of the game's graphics somewhat varied too, but have generally been considered inferior to other releases of the era. Critics praised the familiar gameplay, play control, and level design, but had mixed opinions on its sound design and music.

Reception for Rogue Trip has been mostly positive.

Review publications heavily compared and contrasted Rogue Trip with SingleTrac's past Twisted Metal games and the 1998 PlayStation vehicular combat titles Vigilante 8 and Twisted Metal III. These provide money that can be used for power-ups like weapon upgrades and health refills. The game further features a secondary objective in which the player competes in picking up a tourist for photo ops of landmarks found throughout each level. The player controls a vehicle in third-person perspective on a 3D map and is tasked with eliminating all other opponents by using ballistic projectiles, bombs, and other weaponry. Rogue Trip utilizes an overhauled version of the game engine of the first two Twisted Metal titles, sharing many of their design elements. Following a contractual dispute with Sony, the developer was bought by GT Interactive and Rogue Trip was produced as part of an agreement with its new publisher. SingleTrac found prior success in developing games for publisher Sony Computer Entertainment in the early years of the PlayStation's life cycle, including the vehicular combat series Twisted Metal. The game is set in an apocalyptic fiction alternative history version of the year 2012 where mercenaries fight against each other using vehicles, and various weapons as they pick up tourists, hitchhikers, and passengers paying them fares for bringing them to vacation destinations around the remnants of the destroyed United States, and these mercenaries call themselves "auto mercenaries". Rogue Trip: Vacation 2012, also known as Rogue Trip, is a vehicular combat video game developed by SingleTrac and published by GT Interactive for the PlayStation in 1998.
