In Sunset Overdrive, there is a segment where you grind on the back of a dragon, grab a lightning bolt-shaped piece of the HUD, and stab the dragon in the brain with it.
That’s it. That’s all you need to know.
End of review, now let me get back to playing Sunset Overdrive.
No? Fine.
Sunset Overdrive is one of those wonderful games where the developers have decided that the most important thing is that the player has fun.
This is evident in everything from the aesthetics to the gameplay to the near constant humor.
The adventure is set in the post-apocalypse Sunset City. Rather than portraying the apocalypse as another bleak wasteland a la Fallout, Day Z, and half a billion other games released in the past decade, Insomniac Games has created a self-proclaimed “awesomepocalypse,” giving you a chance to save the world with style. Said apocalypse was caused by an evil corporation named FizzCo who pushed a health code-defying energy drink onto the market that turned people into horrifying mutants.
Sunset City is a gorgeous world full of vibrant colors, and is an absolute joy to swing, grind, and fly through. The neon-loving, alt-punk look is a refreshing break from next-gen grays and browns.
The character creation feature is simple, but flexible enough to allow you to create a unique character. Whether you want to be a massive hulk of a man wearing nothing but the decapitated head of a mutant, or a petite punk rocker, Sunset has you covered. There’s also the added feature of being able to change everything from your sex to your hair color at any point in the game.
The gameplay focuses much more on traversing the environment than having an itchy trigger finger. In order to be successful you must grind, swing, and always be on the move. To aid with your own fast motion, there is an incredibly useful lock-on feature that will target an enemy if you’re so much as looking in their general direction. Since you’ll never be reloading your weapons and ammo isn’t much of a concern because you can just switch guns, you’ll find yourself firing more often than in other shooters.
By the end of the game, you have so many fun traversal moves at your disposal that you won’t even need to touch the ground unless you want to.
The weapons at your disposal are exactly what you’d expect from Insomniac, featuring such gems as the Flaming Compensator (a dragon’s breath shotgun that may or may not be incredibly phallic) and the TNTeddy (a grenade launcher that, as one might expect, launches teddy bears with TNT strapped to them). Every weapon has impressive visual effects like explosions, lightning and fireworks, and even with your amps, enemies, and all of your weapons, there’s never any drop in frame rate.
There’s an interesting strategy element at play, where every weapon is especially effective against specific enemies. Fireworks don’t work well against FizzCo robots, automatic weapons don’t work well against giant, mini-boss enemies, vinyl weapons don’t work well against the Scabs, and it all causes you to constantly be trying out new weapons and switching on the fly.
Additionally, your character has special abilities called amps that activate as you fight more and more stylishly, forcing you to take full advantage of the traversal mechanics at your disposal. These range from causing an announcer to start proclaiming your awesomeness to the world to fireballs shooting from your feet whenever you grind.
The fourth-wall-breaking humor makes fun of the various mission structures, super-stereotypical characters, and classic gameplay mechanics. While many games fall victim to becoming the things that they mock (see Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard), Sunset Overdrive always adds its own unique twists that keep it fresh.
Fair warning however, Sunset Overdrive will make fun of you at one point or another through satirizing so many different groups and hobbies. Because of this, if you can’t take a joke at your own expense, Sunset Overdrive probably won’t be for you.
All of the incredible action is underscored by an original soundtrack full of some excellent punk rock music that is specific to the world of Sunset Overdrive.
For fans of achievements, the list here is actually pretty fun and most of the grind-y achievements are ones that you’ll pick up as you do the others. The list will probably give you an additional 10 hours after finishing the game. The achievements even exhibit the game’s exceptional humor, as evidenced by “Overachiever,” which is an achievement that you receive for receiving an achievement.
One of the most surprisingly enjoyable aspects of Sunset Overdrive is the multiplayer mode Chaos Squad. These matches are series of 8-player cooperative missions that culminate in a base-defense game. Being successful in the cooperative missions causes the night-defense game to be more difficult, which means you’ll receive even better rewards if you survive the night. Chaos Squad takes the insanity of the single-player and kicks it up to 11, throwing in more enemies and more players.
In my 15 hour playthrough there were only three moments where I stopped having an incredible time.
Two of them were glitches where I vaulted over something too close to a corner. But the worst moment of the whole game was the pigeon mission where you will fail if you try to play it like any other mission. You’re forced to either stand still or move without purpose while waiting for an opportunity to present itself, which is the complete opposite of the constant motion that you’re in during the rest of the game.
Be wary of the pigeon mission. Knowing about it ahead of time will save you a lot of frustration.
Sunset Overdrive feels like a rare project of pure passion in the midst of an industry that often seems as though it is becoming dangerously stagnant. It is a game where fun comes first without sacrificing the story in any way.
