Sunset Overdrive

By: Robert Murphy

Life got you down? Stuck in a meaningless and dead end job? Then you need to grab yourself some OverCharge!!!!! The energy drink that provides you with super levels of energy and also turn you into a mutated freak with orange soda tumors all over your body. The makers at FizzCo failed to mention that when they started marketing their brand new energy drink to the public, and now panic and chaos has been unleashed. Lucky for you though, you hate FizzCo so much that you didn't drink any yourself. Now though you and your character must escape from Sunset city, a normally peaceful tapestry of people and buildings with a beautifully designed color pallet, before you get devoured in this mutant apocalypse. You have the skills to do this though as you jump, grind and smack enemies around with your ridiculous arsenal of tools and goodies while displaying the colorful optimism fitting a hero in your position, nice mohawk by the way. 

Sunset Overdrive puts players smack dab in the middle of an open world journey that I did not expect, I could have sworn I was human but when I suddenly scaled a 10 story building and grinding on electric wire with my magical magnet shoes, I began to question what I actually was. There's really no explanation as to why you're able to do what you do in the game and frankly I don't care one way or another, jumping, diving and grinding my way through Sunset city without ever needing to touch the ground is an incredible thrill. This is part of the games allure too because the Sunset Overdrive game mechanics want you to be bouncing off the walls, building streaks to hurt your enemies while dodging all the danger they pose. Your custom made protagonist seems ready, willing and able though to take this threat on and have some series fun along the way, you almost forget that this should be a terrifying thing happening around you, oh well. The world is just too bright and spunky to even notice as you explore the city, fight mutants, human scag soldiers and the killer robot cleaning crews trying to hide FizzCo's mess. 

What makes things even better is the games knack for breaking down the "fourth wall" of video gaming, your character isn't stupid and can feel the trending way that things are going and will make reference to how easy it would be to do things like teleport from what part of the city to the other or to equip something there would usually be a character menu to access. Your character will more or less role with the punches but what is great are the responses you'll get while you're playing, voice over artist for both male and female character to a tremendous job for bringing your characters to life as they respond to the ridiculous nature of their situation. Listening to my spunky female character go on about kicking major tail or the stuck up nature of some annoying rich kids she has to help had me feeling more immersed in the gameplay than I have for a game in quite awhile. It was almost like having my own customized Deadpool character spouting on curse words and causing explosions with outrageous weapons. 

Speaking of, Sunset Overdrive's grab bag of goodies also adds to the style that the game has going for it. Weapons like the Flaming Compensator or the TNTeddy Cannon are at your disposal and add to the chaos around you but in that chaos we see our first taste of an unbalanced system. Because you are in fact human, you can't take too much of a beating from the enemies you will be facing, you have to keep moving like the game wants you too but adding weapons into the mix puts a little more strain onto you. It is doable of course but feels a little too frustrating while you're trying aim, kill and jump all over the place to try and earn points towards your Style meter, the more you move while killing enemies and jumping all over the place, the more style points you gain towards weapon and character modifiers known as Amps. Amps are fun little bonuses to the game though, some adding elemental damage to your guns and other more insane things such as the chance to fire a random mini nuke at a mob of your enemies. But the combat system presented in the game just was a bit jarring to get a grasp around for me, I stuck to some more heavy weaponry, The Roman Candle being my favorite, it made things easier in eliminating my enemies in big groups and made things run much more smoothly. 

This though brings me to what I think was the games biggest flaw and that is the base defense missions set throughout the main storyline. You need to be able to make Amps for your character but this involves using a machine that uses OverCharge and it attracts our mutant friends to the safety of your home base. You must stop these waves of enemies before you finish cooking which involves you trying desperately to string together combos in a smaller setting, laying out traps and trying not to get your butt handed to you. The whole thing takes a step back from what makes Sunset Overdrive's most appealing gameplay elements, mainly running around freely and taking out enemies at your leisure, it hardly makes getting the Amp worth it in the end. The rest of the games story is top notch though, stringing in optional side missions with the other strange survivors in this apocalyptic scenario. Some of these quests are quite bizarre when you're playing but hey the game was already pretty bizarre to begin with, I don't think you can really come away from the experience with out wondering what on Earth you are playing. 

Sunset Overdrive is a game with a phenomenal attitude to it, it doesn't hold anything it wants to say back and makes for one heck of a thrill ride. Combat for the game does take some getting use to, you need to be able to balance your skills together in just the right way but once you get the hang of things you will be blowing enemies to pieces. The good definitely outweighs the bad for the game so don't be discouraged in picking up a copy of your own and making the punk rock character you always wanted to be deep down inside.

Good:

- Traversing the wires and the insanely colorful landscape of Sunset City 

- Customizing your spunky playable character and your characters brilliant personality

- Ridiculous and outlandish weapons and Amps

Bad:

- The base defense missions for the game are a step in the wrong direction

- The hard to handle gun mechanics

Scully Rating: 8.6 out of 10