What a truly crazy, insane and thoroughly enjoyable game. Sunset Overdrive brings back the elements of the classic arcade games and moulds them to fit a 21st century platform.
From the beautiful explosions of ‘OD’ in orange goo to the fantastically witty scripting, this is an Xbox One exclusive that does anything but take itself seriously.
Typically the story is weak, passable, but weak. That said the story is in no way the saving grace of the game. You play a cleaner, whom you can customise to great lengths, who is working at what looks like an energy drink festival. In actual fact it’s the launch of a new drink called OverCharge Delirium XT.
Sunset Overdrive is beautiful, fun and bursting with colour.
Unfortunately the new drink, shortened to OCD, was rushed through testing by its company FizzCo and so didn’t meet the regular health and safety regulations.
As a result we’re left with Sunset City being overrun with zombie-like creatures known as OD. Unlike zombies however, blood is the last thing you’ll see with them. While they do attack the humans it’s the apparently delicious energy drink that they crave.
Defeating them does offer a great deal of satisfaction especially some of the bigger ones. There’s a whole range of them and after beating some of them their type name is spelt out in orange goo above where they stood, a small, but delightful feature.
As for gameplay, it plays an awful lot like Tony Hawk meets Ratchet and Clank. Made by Insomniac games, the folks behind the Ratchet and Clank series, it features a whole lot of ‘skating’ along kerbs, wires, bars of any consortium.
The continuous upgrading of weapons which, have some of the most creative attacks anyone could think of, keeps the player interested and gives a reason to keep killing OD.
It’s the game’s originality that helps it stand out. It’s a fantastic take on the apocalypse, a genre that has typically been overdone.
What was so impressive about Sunset Overdrive is that a game that’s so ridiculous has developed an instantly recognisable style. You walk into a room with someone playing it and from one frame of the action you’d immediately cop it as Sunset Overdrive.
It’s quite the achievement. It’s such a refreshing take on a genre that has been overdone and it does it’s fair share of mocking the game industry as a whole.
Sunset Overdrive is one of the most original games to hit the market in a long time. It can get repetitive but I found the satire in it alone to be enough to keep me playing. The weapon upgrades seem a bottomless pit of explosive fun and the way the game almost forces the player to play with style and swagger will get even the most conventional of gamer into some jump back shot spin kills.
It’s hard to condemn really. Perhaps at times the mission structure can send you into bouts of deja vu but apart from that it really has some charisma about it. An excellent, fun and different game.
