Sunset Overdrive (2014)

I can’t believe I missed out on this for so long. For some reason, every time I looked at it, it always seemed to me more like a gimmick than a fully realised attempt. Boy, was I wrong.

I had so much fun playing Sunset Overdrive. What a whacky, silly, almost insane game. There is very little it doesn’t do well, but let’s start with what is, to me, its most shining object. The traversal system is something to marvel at. I didn’t think it possible for any game in 2014 to have such an impressively fluid and intricate movement network. Sunset Overdrive was Spiderman before Spiderman. I have very little doubt Insomniac’s later games drew heavily from this system. It doesn’t flow 100% of the time, and it feels a bit frustrating when it doesn’t. But the game is very generous in locking you in to keep that sense of flow going, and I had a blast every time I was grinding on rails or cables, jumping on cars and buildings, running on walls, dashing through water or flying through the air in short bursts. They really weren’t kidding when they said the ground is the most dangerous place in the game, and they truly encourage you to avoid it at all times. I didn’t use fast travel once because getting around Sunset City was so much fun that I didn’t want to skip it. It takes a while to get the hang of navigation, but once you do, it’s incredible stuff.

This game offers a lot more than its amazing traversal system, however: 1) the art and visual style are beautiful and hold up perfectly to this day; 2) the punk soundtrack is great and a perfect fit from start to finish - just the fact that they had King Buzzo in the game made my day; 3) the weapons and traps are the craziest and most creative I have ever seen in a video game. They’re all a joy to use and experiment with, and surprisingly, they complement each other very well from a tactical aspect; 4) the sense of humour is a breath of fresh air, and I imagine this was even truer back in 2014. Sunset Overdrive wears its ridicule on its sleeve, never once taking itself seriously and laying out an enjoyable parody of video game tropes; 5) the sheer amount of variety on offer. Apart from all the fun you get through the ludicrous main story, you also get lots of side quests, challenges and collectibles to dive into, and these reward you with everything from upgrades to character customisation items. All this turns Sunset Overdrive into a complete package, with an impressive amount of content that can overall give you well over 20 hours of action packed moments.

I had a bit of an issue with the camera in combat, because sometimes, depending on what you’re doing, it locks in a weird angle and makes it harder to see what’s going on clearly. But this was a minor gripe in an otherwise really accomplished vision. In Sunset Overdrive, Insomniac created a unique world that gives you an insane, full throttle, no-holding-back, adrenaline fuelled playthrough from the get go, and I had a fantastic time with it. 9/10.

3.5*

Starting w/ the good:

• The movement flows really well and is one of the best platforming systems I've played in any open world game, reminiscent of Jet-Set Radio
• Gunplay feels good, not too weighty but also not too floaty
• The writing CAN be funny (IN PLACES* - see below) and there are plenty of cultural references to spot
• The world feels properly realised and is a vibrant and gorgeous place to explore
• Allies are well-written and performed, which makes up for the cookie-cutter protag
• Feels like Ratchet and Clank mixed w/ Saints Row

Cons:

• Repetitive. From mission to mission this isn't such a big problem but I personally hated the den defences and hated the many (many) fetch quests. Set-pieces help to disguise the repetition but even at the game's short length (10-15 hours) it's very noticeable.
• The writing throws everything at the wall and sees what sticks. I liked the parody of corporate culture but the 'badassery' aspect just feels so try-hard that it becomes lame. It's also TOO smart-ass at times. Like in the DLC there's this mission that's a Psycho reference, which 1) I clocked after about two seconds and 2) they made some weird joke about nobody under 30 getting the reference. Like... you're referencing Psycho by Hitchock not like something actually niche.
• The plot. By the time you're introduced to the fourth faction the game rushes through properly characterising them just to get to the final mission. There is no 'villain', really. I know Fizzco is the villain and you DO fight 'them' in various business forms, whether their murderous propaganda balloon or literally their HQ building but I think having an actual character or nemesis would offer more motivation.
• DLC is just more of the same, but not in an interesting way and by the time you've finished the main quest the last thing you'll want to do is MORE fetch quests
• All guns are equal, but some are more equal than others. Just stick with the TNT-Teddy gun you get early on, nothing else ever comes close.
• Busted economy. Some of the guns and cosmetic items are REALLY EXPENSIVE, and even completing every mission won't net you enough cash to buy everything the vendors sell.

Overall, I would definitely recommend playing Sunset Overdrive if you think it looks interesting but I don't consider it as a must-play, and it's definitely my least favourite game that Insomniac have developed.

Note: I didn't bother w/ the online mode or the challenges.

Platformers are my favourite game genre. Some of my favourites as a kid were the various Mario games and Spiderman 2, and in recent years, I've found Celeste, A Hat in Time, and the Ori games to be fantastic.

If you've played any of those games and they resonated with you too - or if you're a fan of great movement systems - then give Sunset Overdrive a try. I had a great time with it.

In most platformers, the challenge is in getting through the level as fast as possible, or it's in executing tight maneuvers (e.g. double-jumping with just the right timing to fit between two spikes). Sunset Overdrive isn't like that. Rather, the goal is to traverse the level without stumbling - by bouncing, sliding, wall-running, air dashing, rolling, and swinging, in order to keep your combo going - all whilst accurately shooting your gun. It reminds me almost of a rhythm game, like the freeflow combat in the Batman Arkham games.

The game is cheesy, doesn't take itself seriously, and relies on meta 4th wall breaks for a lot of its humour. So if you're looking for a dramatic, emotional storyline, this game doesn't have it. But it's a lot of fun, so check it out.

Good, dumb fun.

For the story and dialogue, the writers really tried harnessing some Ryan-Reynolds-ass attitude, and I respect that -- in all of its dumbass-itude. It also revels in every opportunity to say the word "fuck", and I'm just enough of an infant to think it's funny. (There's a profanity filter I never enabled, but I think would actually be entertaining to hear how they address all of the swearing)

Traversal take awhile to take get the hang of, and isn't nearly as intuitive as Spider-Man. But once you get good at it, you can zip across the map with ease.

Collectables are way too plentiful to even bother trying to collect them all. I'm talking Assassin's Creed Unity types of overload. And unfortunately, the game really wants you to lean into those collectables to get any meaningful ability upgrades.

Enough talk. Look at the adorable stupid asshole I birthed for my playthrough.

What are you still doing here? Go home. This review's over...

As fun as the traversal and combat is in this game, a lot of the repetitive activities simply don't feel compelling enough to repeat. All of the variety in the game comes from your weapons and mods, all of which feel really great to toy around with, but the actual activities are much more limited. Defend something, or go fetch something, and fight OD while doing so.

There's good fun in the chaos, but there's a limit to how long I want to keep doing the same things. It a surprise for me considering I usually find all of the things that Insomniac packs into a game to be fun. I usually fully complete Insomniac games simply because I enjoy the ride. Sunset Overdrive feels like a game packed full of more, simply to meet some idea of what an open world game should be in 2014. It also feels far more driven by the fact that they expected a specific type of Xbox player, people used to things like a robust multiplayer mode. It feels less like Insomniac's PlayStation outings where a solid single player campaign, full of fun things to do, is the primary focus.

Which brings me back to Spider-Man. So many ideas were borrowed from their game to make Spider-Man. There is even a segment where you chase a target, while drugged. It feels strikingly similar to the Scorpion chase sequence in Insomniac's Spider-Man, simply swap the venom pools and bottomless pits of Spider-Man for lava in Sunset Overdrive. While combat in the two games is different (crowbars and guns versus fists and webs), the systems that prop up that combat are very similar. You have similar mods that you equip, that augment your combat. In Sunset Overdrive those are amps and overcharge, and Spider-man it's suit augs and tech upgrades. The similarities in movement are even greater. It's a joy to move around thanks to the fluidity of grinding and bouncing in Sunset Overdrive and swinging and web zipping in Spider-Man. Truly, the heart of both games is their movement and the strongest aspect carried from Sunset Overdrive to Spider-Man.

Where Spider-Man truly excels over Sunset Overdrive is in its character development and story. As entertaining as Sunset Overdrive can be, it is far more like a poor Saint's Row clone than a truly fleshed out game that stands on its own merit. It tries very hard to be crass in its humour, but most jokes are more cringeworthy than they are satirical. Saints Row is a thorough skewering of film, television and video game media with a significant amount of both meta- and intertextual discourse. Sunset Overdrive feels like a game that barely scratches the surface I that respect, that placed all its eggs in the basket of stupid humour peppered with the word fuck. Sure, at times I laughed, but the stereotypes and reference in Sunset Overdrive lack substance, they lack conviction beyond "hey stupid sounding shit seems funny." So you have weird jokes about adult troop scouts, and larpers, the usual lazy "hey nerds are silly" or "fat dudes are funny" or some weird ableist shit revolving around a troop leader who had to eat all his limbs to survive for 16 days in a garbage truck. And sure, the nerds seems to hold their own, and one could say the game attempts to redeem the same groups it lambasts, but the jokes are so simplistic and mean spirited that they fall flat. It's writing that seems to rest on the idea that ridiculing people works as satire as long as you show them kicking ass. It doesn't work because it's overly simplistic and poorly delivered. There's nothing wrong with crass humour, because what is crass can often break down things like stereotypes by accurately skewing and revealing the absurdity of those stereotypes. But Sunset Overdrive doesn't do the work that it takes to do that, and just feels like a game that wanted characters and a story that sounds as irreverent and cool as the game is fun to play. It nails the latter but fails the former.

And I would be remiss if I don't talk about the weird way the game includes Queerness, a way that I think provides a wonderful snapshot of game design in 2014. You only have two choices of gender presentation in the game. Unlike Saints Row, which I've already mentioned I think Sunset Overdrive takes inspiration from, you can't mix and match things like body and voice. If you pick a female body you get a feminine presentation, if you pick a male body you get a masculine presentation. It's a pretty cut and dry binary.

And then you start the game and it becomes clear that despite the very decent work of the female protagonist's voice actor, this game had male as default in mind. Every tutorial scene features the male hero, every joke revolves around the idea that your hero is a guy. And that idea that the main character is male makes the game either exceptionally straight, or exceptionally Queer, depending on your choice at the beginning of the game. And it's all because none of the dialogue or scenarios are changed to reflect anything other than male straightness. Thus, if you play the hero presenting as a woman, everything is suddenly hyper Queer. The characters that hit on you are pretty exclusively women. The jokes about who or what you find sexy all revolve around attraction to women. So if you choose to play the game as a female character, you get to play as a pretty rad lesbian kick ass hero. If you chose to play as a guy you're...well you're another regular old straight video game dude.

The sad part it I can't really give Insomniac points for any of the Queerness in theme, because it's clearly just a byproduct of running the same dialogue that was intended for a straight dude through the talents of a female voice actor. She plays it with her own stye, but it is still distinctly pretty heteronormative stuff if you pick the male character. So in the end it provides us less a template for a progressive approach to AAA game development, and more an approach that sees male players as the main demographic. Players who probably will largely play as the default male protagonist. And the rest of those who might pick the female protagonist are likely an imagined audience of guys who could find the slight nods to Queerness kinda hot. Anyone else was probably no more than an afterthought, a demographic not worth actively catering to.

I should be clear, I doubt anyone at Insomniac or Microsoft had any ill intent whatsoever, it's just interesting to consider this game as means to judge assumptions about gaming audiences in 2014, and which members of those audiences devs were actively courting. It's also interesting to consider that Sunset Overdrive is likely not specifically not Queer, but it also probably is largely only accidentally Queer, and only if you pick one of the two gendered presentations in the game.

And as for overall narrative, Sunset Overdrive is fairly barebones, the minimum required to string together reasons to go nuts in an ope world playground. Thankfully the gameplay mechanics are fun enough to carry you through, but unlike Sider-Man, there's nothing memorable about the characters or story. It's just something to justify attacking mutant enemies with acid sprinklers and TNT Teddies. But as fun as Insomniac games can be, they usually have more of a complete story to tell. Insomniac devs aren't perfect, and make mistakes even in their best games, but I think their strength lies in compelling single player games with solid mechanics and an enjoyable story. Maybe Sunset Overdrive was an experiment for them, a chance to ignore trying to match a story up to the crazy mechanics they wanted to play around with. And as a playground in which to wreak havoc, it's mostly a pretty good game. But compared to a lot of their other games, it's an amusing distraction that likely led to a much better series of games in Spider-Man and Miles Morales.

One last thing: wayyy too many characters repeat themselves all the time. Fast travel and somebody is going to repeat the last line they said to you two minutes prior. Spend too much time goofing around on the map, somebody is going to repeat instructions about what to do next for your active mission. Insomniac wants you to have a good time in their vast playground, but doesn't have the guts to take off your training wheels to let you actually mess about on your own.

Sunset Overdrive is a really fun and crazy game. From the beginning, the game just wants to make you understand that this game is not a serious game. You are here to enjoy and laugh.

The first minutes are hard. But once you have some better weapons and you are used to the gameplay, you enjoy a lot.

The game is an open city where you are receiving crazy quests, obtaining new weapons, and unlocking new quests in other districts. Speaking about the city, the design is awesome. Every element is put in place for being able to go from one point to another point without touching the ground. Even moving around the city is nice.

Maybe it can sound strange... but sometimes I realize that I am playing a game and I am not quite enjoying it. Maybe I am playing because of the plot, but the gameplay sucks. Or maybe I am playing because I started the game and I have this need of finishing it. Or other things... but this was not happening to me when I was a kid...

Ok.. this game is not going to be the game of the century or decade, but the game reminded me of those times... when I was a kid and I use to play games for fun.

Totally recommend it.

Меня хватило на час.

Натужные шутки вроде "если бы я был в компьютерной игре... Эй, почему я слышу голоса?!", из которых состоит, кажется, вся игра. Унылый геймплей, состоящий из гринда во всех смыслах: нужно кататься по любым краям, как в Тони Хоуке, набирать стиль как в Девил Мэй Край, чтобы эффективнее гриндить врагов, чтобы накопить на новые пушки, чтобы убивать...

Импакта от оружия никакого. Конечно, я видео только три пушки, но нарезать круги по проводам вокруг толпы монстров пока всех не перестреляешь (одна из обучающих миссий) так уныло. Дальше дадут больше способностей, сделают врагов жирнее, но суть останется без изменений. А суть - уныние и натужный, якобы "молодежный и безбашенный" юмор из отсылок и пародий, без меры и вкуса.

Sunset Overdrive makes you hate it immediately, leaving you no room but to grow to love it over time. The "attitude" of Sunset Overdrive is one of the energy drinks it mocks, an attempt to be extreme to a laughable level. In many ways, Sunset Overdrive is Insomniac's Poochie, a "totally in your face!" game, whose style can get grating at times. What blew me away about Sunset Overdrive though is that despite how annoying SO's style can be, the mechanics and replayability of the game won me over by the end. By the final moments of Sunset Overdrive, everything I couldn't stand about the game became things I loved.

To start, that attitude is so over-the-top, that it's insane how wild Sunset Overdrive is attempting to be. This feels like what older people believe "cool" to be in 2014. Yet when I thought about it, I don't know what type of style I'd prefer. This style doesn't remain as obnoxious as it does at the beginning, and after a while, I didn't mind the game's attempts to be relevant.

In connection with the attitude, the humor doesn't always work. One of the first side-missions I attempted was a Breaking Bad parody character that irritated the living hell out of me. It was lazy and stupid and didn't give me high hopes for the rest of the game. Yet again, as the game progresses, either I fell into Stockholm Syndrome with this game, or I grew to admire that style and humor. There were several meta jokes and references to things I like that I actually laughed out loud at. It's not a hilarious game - no matter how hard it tries - but it is amusing at times.

What I expected with Sunset Overdrive was sort of a Jet Set Radio retread, but with the character dynamics of Ratchet and Clank. What wonderfully surprised me was that this was like a far more enjoyable version of Dead Rising, combined with the satisfying feeling of connection combos throughout a massive world that reminds me of Tony Hawk at its best. In fact, Sunset Overdrive almost feels like what the later Tony Hawk games tried to do, in terms of larger worlds and attitudes, but Sunset Overdrive fulfills that promise.

It's that ability to traverse that world that found me wandering aimlessly, or attempting to complete every side-mission and hunt for items that this game offered me. I didn't fast travel with this game until I had found everything, and the ability to grind and fly around this world never lost its excitement for me. Sunset Overdrive's excellence at world navigating made me incredibly excited about what Insomniac will do with the Spider-Man license.

The only aspect that never grew on me with Sunset Overdrive were the more strategic elements, especially the "protect the VATS" missions, where I would have to place traps and keep them protected for several minutes against massive waves of enemies. I also never quite cared as much about character upgrades as this game clearly wanted me to. It wasn't hard to navigate or anything, but it did feel completely superfluous in what I needed to beat this game.

Sunset Overdrive was a welcome surprise for me, a game who doesn't take itself seriously, that doesn't ratchet up the difficulty, and in doing such, makes a fairly easy, fun game that just wants you to enjoy yourself in this world. I'd rather appreciate a fun world that I want to explore for hours than be frustrated by a game that makes it hard for me love. Sunset Overdrive is nothing but fun, and I admire Insomniac's dedication to just let me screw around and enjoy the world that they've made for me.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I started playing Sunset Overdrive, but I think I can safely sum up the game in one sentence: If Tony Hawk, Grand Theft Auto, and Ratchet and Clank had a threesome and were to somehow have baby, this game would be it.

Developed by Insomniac (the same folks who brought you Ratchet and Clank) , this game literally has everything you could ask for: Amazing graphics and game art (seriously some of the best game art/design that I have EVER seen in a game), a story that is engaging and HILARIOUS (seriously, go watch some game footage where you get to hear character dialogue and TRY not to laugh,) and more weapons and character mods than you can probably figure out what to do with. Plus, once you familiarize yourself with the controls and game play, the entire experience can be ridiculously addictive.

The basic premise of the game is this -- an energy drink is unveiled to the public that turns anyone who comes into contact with it into mutants, thus triggering the beginning of the apocalypse, and guess who is stuck right in the middle of the chaos? You grind and zip your way across Sunset City you'll come into contact with a host of fun characters who have side missions for you outside of the main mission, collecting items and destroying the mutant OD's and the human Scabs (a gang of looters/raiders) with a WIDE array of guns, complete with upgrade-able mods and perks to make the killing even more fun and efficient.

And keep in mind, this is an Insomniac game that we're talking about here -- if you've played any of the Ratchet and Clank series, you know the weapon selection is not only numerous, but some of the guns are going to be hysterically awesome to use.

There are also specific side missions very similar to what you would find in the "Tower Defense" type games -- You defend your "base" area from waves of enemies by setting up different traps (and like with guns, you can upgrade and add perks to traps to increase their efficiency) . The side missions will reward you with experience and cash, as well as cans of Overdrive, which are another type of in-game currency used to purchase weapon upgrades, new clothes for you character, etc.

(Side note-- there are TONS of outfits to choose from for you character. It's awesome.)

Your character can also add mods/perks as you level up, and this feature, in combination with the mod-able weapons and traps, allows for a truly unique game experience -- You really can tailor your guns and abilities to the way YOU want to play.

I give this game a 9.5/10, and an ABSOLUTE MUST PLAY if you're a fan of fast-paced platform-type games, with a touch of absurd, yet delightful humor.