Xbox gamers have been deprived of more than a few Sony exclusives: Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Heavenly Sword, and anything bearing the Insomniac badge of gaming goodness. One of those walls has crumbled down because I have just played through Insomniac’s newest game, Sunset Overdrive, on the Xbox One.
Fizzco’s newest energy drink, Overcharge XL, has exclusively debuted in Sunset City, at a massive party with virtually the entire city in attendance. Unfortunately, the giant orange can of energized goodness has an adverse effect on humans, turning them into Overcharge addicted monstrosities with a penchant for murdering humans. This event is referred to as Terror Night. Now Fizzco is trying to cover up their little chemical oversight by destroying the city and all of its inhabitants. Only the mighty Sarcasmo Jones (you can name your character something else if you really want to) can keep the survivors alive, grind rails, kick ass, and make Fizzco pay for ruining a perfectly good product launch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heYWIUIFwbw[width=650,height=366]
Ridiculously Good Weapons
Insomniac has, once again, upped the arsenal in a big way. In addition to shooter staples like assault rifles and Dirty Harry magnums, players can use guns that shoot cds, teddy bear bombs, boomerangs, bowling balls, Fizzco ammo, sentinel turrets, freeze rays, fire...whatever. There is no shortage of crazy weaponry in this game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmBR2gAF7PQ[width=650,height=366]
Amps can be purchased or won during the game, and will provide your pixelated protagonist with cooler moves, deadlier attacks, and grindier ways of getting around town. Upgrades can be applied to weapons and ammo as well. Stylized combos build a style meter, which opens up opportunities for special moves and accelerated XP accumulation.
Player customization is also impressively deep. Want to be a hot, black chick in denim and heavy metal leather boots? Done. How about a huge bearded weirdo in an amusement park costume? Gotcha covered, amigo. How about a withered, old man dressed in a diaper? Stop it, you have issues. Like Dead Rising and Saint's Row, the player can choose their sex and body type, and then adorn that cartoon avatar any way they want to...but no diapers. I played as a hot chick for the entire game, but I was really just fishing for compliments in co-op.
Insomniac’s Game For Grown-Ups
Although Sunset Overdrive contains many elements used by “tamer” Insomniac entries like crazy, cartoony guns, rail grinding protagonist just this side of awesome, and Saturday morning style, this is definitely a game for adults. The game makes liberal use of F-Bombs, drug references, alcohol consumption, and murder. This approach is completely appropriate for the game’s intended “young adult” audience, which naturally makes it more attractive to younger players. All I’m saying is watch what your fucking kids are playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cceFg8xzsZ0&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLA...
The Denizens of the Awesomepocalypse
There is no shortage of enemies in Sunset City, and everywhere the player travels he or she will have to fight their way there, and probably fight some more once they arrive at their destination. There are 3 basic enemy types in Sunset Overdrive: orange zomboids, armed dickheads, and fucking robots. The orange guys, plurally referred to as the OD, can be human sized on up to hulkster versions with backhoe bucket arms, known as Herkers, or a giant orange jerk that spawns fresh OD constantly and should be a priority target in a swarm situation. Some of the smaller OD possess projectile abilities and can be problematic if allowed to lob in damage from the sideline.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Rhzn-XzUw&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLA...
Scabs are territorial human survivors who have armed themselves to the teeth and claimed the city as their own. Apparently the awesomepocalypse has not affected everyone in a positive way. These bands of enemies favor rockets and assault rifles from a distance while their melee counterparts swarm in. Robots are Fizzco creations that become progressively tougher throughout the game. Weapon types and ammo are effective against some enemies but not others, so change things up if enemies aren’t taking damage.
The secondary characters in the game all have their own personalities and motivations, without becoming too stereotypical. There’s a gang of technophile remedial school reprobates holed up in a kiddie pizza joint, assassin latina cheerleaders have taken over the hospital, a group of scouts have holed up in a Japanese museum, and the gamer/role play nerds have staked out the amusement park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATHMnDKlHjU&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLA...
In order to progress the story, you will have to do stuff for a group to get them to like you, and in turn they will provide the means to fulfill your current quest...then you’ll have to back and save them from OD, Scabs, or robots at some point. Yeah, it’s a little formulaic, and Insomniac knows this, but it works.
Chaos Squad
Photo booths scattered around the city allow players to join each other in a little competitive co-op action called Chaos Squad. This is generally four scored rounds with eight players voting on events. These could be area defense scenarios, assault missions, hacking missions, or a flat-out kill everything that moves mission. Gear and glory accrued in Chaos Squad will carry over to your single player game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sag_-0M38g4&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLA...
The Shiny Parts
Insomniac has fleshed out an entire city, full of interesting and well-developed characters, and provided a storyline that is both fun and light-hearted in spite of the blood in the streets. The standouts of the games are the guns and the characters. Setting up an acid sprinkler in cartoon character form was more fun than it should have been, and the bigger and tougher the crowds, the bigger and better the guns became. The protagonist is a slick, witty, all American badass, regardless of sex, able to handle almost any OD shitstorm thrown their way, which gives a good sense of empowerment.
Despite the guns and attitude, Insomniac has had a lot of fun with the game and packed it full of irreverent humor, industry jabs, Wrestlemania-like character entrances for showdowns, and a whole slew of respawn animations that almost make it fun to die...almost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-ZIFCiHZHQ[width=650,height=366]
You Knew it Was Coming
My first real problem with the game is the color: it’s very, very orange. Let the OD stream in, cut loose with the Ahab and, in short order, the tv screen looks like an obscene, pulsating brain in the last convulsions of Malarial fever. The grind and kill cycle got old fairly quickly: swoop around and kill a bunch of shit then grind somewhere else and do it again. Combat and traversal often felt like a repetitive chore and, in the end, even the coolest game loses traction when the combat becomes stale. Grinding to get around was pretty smooth, especially compared to the parkour systems in other current games, but we’ve been grinding rails in Insomniac games since the PS1 days of Ratchet and Clank, and it’s lost a chunk of the shiny that it once had. The eight-player chaos squad was a good idea in theory, but the execution doesn’t differentiate itself from the rest of the game, so it’s the exact same shit but with more people.
The game also contains more than a few glitches, some glaring, but not game-breaking. Once, tasked with clearing a building of robots to obtain a Fizzco executive’s fancy Katana, the game did not register that I had killed a sufficient number of automatons and they kept spawning for forty five minutes....twice! Third time was a charm and the game let me claim the prize, but only after withholding game progression for an hour and a half. Yeah, that kinda sucked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcU1sJX1w4M&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLA...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xY40pbmU8c&list=UUeUIaIHNJKlpTBo0iXuaLA...
Sarcasmo Says
Sunset Overdrive is a mixture of old-school Ratchet and Clank fun, Dead Rising's enemy volume, Saint’s Row irreverance and humor, and a whole lot of orange. I wouldn’t rush out and plunk down sixty bones for a new copy, but I would scoop it up once it hit the $40 range. It’s a good game, but I would attack it in small doses to keep it fresh because this one goes flat fast.
