Sunset Overdrive is a third-person open-world game in where you play as a janitor miserably picking up trash amid an awesome concert. Before starting the game properly, you’ll be able to customize whether you want to be male or female, with clothes customization being unlocked a short while after. Both genders are fully voice acted, and as luck would have it for their already crummy day, an energy drink causes everyone there to turn into mutants, and you are forced to flee for your life. Making your way out of the concert, you find that the entire city has already turned and your first mission is to head home, open up a cold one, and ride the whole thing over.
That plan goes about as well as you’d expect, but does a brilliant job of setting up the humor-filled tone of this title. It doesn’t have a serious bone in its body, and it is never even explained how or why you have a superpower that allows you to grind on objects such as rails or power-lines. They put to good use their lack of having to explain anything. It is rare when you’ll truly be able to guess what comes next. From one of your first weapons being a gun that shoots vinyl records to going off and gathering tree bark alongside a bunch of crazy role-players to “heal” their king, it is all refreshingly insane and creative.
With all the mutants roaming about, it should come as little wonder that the city is quite dangerous to explore. There are usually a ton of mutants at any one time and merely alerting one will see the entire horde making it their life’s mission to hunt you down. You have more than enough weapons to bring down anything that comes your way and can carry up to eight guns at any time, so you’ll always have the tools you’ll need for any situation. Standing your ground is ill-advised, even with all that firepower as you will quickly be swarmed by these agile foes, not to mention there are various unique enemies aside from your common mutants.
Being always on the move is a crucial component to Sunset Overdrive. You can grind on objects, wall run, bounce incredibly high on multiple things scattered about the world, and slide across the water just to name a few abilities. Movement in this game is just fantastic. It may take a bit of time to get the controls down as it requires quite a bit on your part, especially when you factor in combat to the mix. Once you get the hang of it however, it becomes a spectacle to behold, and even traversing without anything chomping at your ankles is a real treat. And your ankles will be chomped on if you ever stay stationary when fighting.
There are also human and robot enemies, each pertaining to a different faction. It is not uncommon to run across complete madness as they battle one another, making the world feel much more alive and avoiding the feeling that enemies exist only to kill you. There are some other dynamic events like an NPC needing your help or mutants flipping over a truck containing the dangerous energy drink they love to slurp up. They do give you something to do, though both happen so often and the reward is so meager that you’ll quickly find yourself ignoring them as you travel around the city. Your reason for forgoing simply fast traveling over there, aside from the fantastic movement system are all the collectibles.
Sunset Overdrive knows all too well that we gamers will collect anything and cheekily made their collectibles into seemingly useless stuff such as stinky shoes on power-lines, toilet paper strung up on things, and balloons. There are a ton of each to collect, found all over the three decently sized islands that make up the game world. Finding at least a few of each will become necessary to activate certain quests, but the number is so minuscule that it is likely you’ll already have the amount needed even if you do not go out of your way to get them. These collectibles are not just for achievement hunters either. They are required to upgrade weapons and yourself with perks.
The perks, also known as Amps in this title are quite interesting and are another key thing that makes it unique. In the upper-right corner of your screen, you have something called a style meter. Being constantly on the move and pulling off cool, varied tricks will fill it up. That, in turn, will activate whatever Amps you have equipped from a tier of one to three. Using your first amps you receive as an example, the first tier will cause a fireball to fly out from any of your melee attacks, with the second creating an explosive shock-wave when you bounce on things. And finally, the third will see random lightning falling from the sky and onto your foes. These are just the first ones. There are a ton more to discover to vary things up even more from shooting and moving.
It feels like if someone blended Sega’s Vanquish and Jet Set Radio together, then tossed in over-the-top Mario Kart style power-ups for good measure. I wouldn’t call the combat easy, especially since it takes a great deal of skill on your part to both move around and be able to aim at whatever is chasing after you, though you can’t actually die. If you lose all your health, you’ll instantly respawn in a goofy manner just a few feet away from where you met your untimely demise. The only consequence seems to be that your style meter resets to zero, but it is an easy task to get it back up. Easily the most challenging part of this game are the moments when you have to defend your base in a pseudo tower defense style. You can set traps before the wave and will soon after find yourself dealing with an insane amount of enemies coming at all angles.
Having to defend something, whether it be your base or a vital character is a far more difficult task than keeping yourself alive. The humanoid enemies can easily snipe you from afar if you stand still, though as soon as you start making use of your environment and grinding along rails, they will never be able to hit you. You’ll see the bullets spray past you as it nearly hits to give you the illusion of danger, but it is pretty obvious. If you ever find yourself stopping or on the ground, you will be cut down quickly however. Mutants are a far graver danger than either the humans or the well-equipped robots. They can obstruct your path by hanging onto power-lines, shoot preemptive acid as to where they think you’re headed next, and possess some other truly nasty beasts. All those attacks are avoidable, though if you have someone to defend, it’s best to stock up on some ammo for your best weapons.
Nearly everything is purchased by using the energy drinks as a currency from new weapons, upgrades, and buying maps to the collectibles locations. The latter in particular can get really pricey and keep you from purchasing any fun new weapons to try out throughout. In which there are a ton. I’ve spent nearly 20 hours with this game and completed every side-quest, yet still posses around half of what’s on offer. There are guns that fire nanobot swarms, deployable helicopter turrets, alongside a weapon that fires explosive teddy bears. The amps really add even more to experiment with. For example, you can make it so your deployable flying turrets have a chance to cause nuclear explosions, which will soon have the battlefield booming without you raising a finger.
The side-quests in Sunset Overdrive are pretty good and well worth playing. They are nearly equivalent to the actual story quests and will have you meeting all sorts of strange people, as well as doing odd favors for them. Humor is one of the most subjective things to talk about, but I found it really well done, and it had me giggling quite a few times. It can be pretty dark like someone that ate all his limbs after being trapped for several weeks without food or making jokes about that same guy’s sister in the included DLC for the PC version. There is a toggle to turn of both profanities and gore for a slightly more PG experience. As funny as it is, far too many of your missions are simple fetch quests. They try to find some way to make them fun and unique, mostly through humor, though it shines when it breaks free from this dreadfully overused open-world design.
I’ve completed all of the missions in about 20 hours as previously stated, but I haven’t even touched all of the trials littering the map. Nor have I collected much of the DLC areas new collectibles. And truth be told, I am not in the slightest bit getting tired of it despite having played so much of this title in a relatively short amount time. The movement system, above all else, really sells this title. There is never a dull moment as you are always focused on keeping your style meter filled, even if you do not plan on getting into a fight. It is just a zen-like feeling traversing around the city that reminded me of the countless hours I spent doing much of nothing other than having mindless fun in the early Tony Hawk games.
Throw in some high powered weaponry, great music, alongside a carefree attitude, and you have something truly brilliant. There is a ton of customization options for your character, and the fact that he isn’t a mute gives him some charm, as well as making him feel like part of the world. He/she is a really sarcastic person that frequently breaks the fourth wall and is a lovable unwilling hero. It does fall into some of the open-world trappings like a ton of fetch quests and a ton of collectibles. However, the fact that it is actually fun to get around the city does alleviate that. Sunset Overdrive is an incredibly refreshing title that is simply content with being a video game and gives you a ton of cool things to play with or do, no explanation needed or long-winded lore given. It has a ton of colors thrown in its environments, a ton of creativity into nearly every aspect of it, and never a dull moment. This is one title well worth having in your collection.
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