 Gotta bounce!
A new energy drink has just been released and has a horrible side-effect. It causes anyone who drinks it to turn into a violent monster that craves more of the drink. Now a handful of survivors must find a way out of the city before it is destroyed completely.
1. Gameplay
My initial introduction to Sunset Overdrive at E3 left me frustrated and confused. The demo threw me into the deep end of the game, expecting me to fully understand the movement and combat mechanics in a scenario designed to be overwhelming to most players. It was an unfortunate event, since the game ultimately was far better than that brief E3 demo. However, despite this, I still have my reservations about the design of the game as a whole. 
I have an unopened can of this on my desk.
Sunset Overdrive is a game designed around a mechanic. The player can grind along any rail-like object and bounce on top of any square or circular object. The entire game is meant to be absurd and comedic, and it accomplishes this with varying degrees of effectiveness. Sometimes the game is genuinely funny, other times it feels a bit too forced. It never approached the “cringeworthy” category, but I hardly ever laughed out loud either.
The problem with Sunset Overdrive is that the game is extremely repetitive. Oddly enough, the game knows this and acknowledges it. In one part my character has to impress a hostile character. My character says that in order to impress this person, all I have to do is a few fetch quests and everything will be perfect. The funny (and unfunny) part about this statement is that it’s absolutely true. All my character does in this game, with a few rare exceptions, are fetch quests for other characters. I never experienced significant frustration with this game, but I was constantly bored and looking for some sort of variety.
Very awesome creature designs though.
The simultaneously great and disappointing thing about the quest design is that the final battle sequence is amazing. It’s well worth slogging through the mundane fetch quests in order to get there. But after nearly a dozen hours of repetitive gameplay, I was ready to give things up. If more of the game had been like the final battle sequence, I would have been far more satisfied.
This game is good but not great. It’s not the kind of game that would make me recommend buying an Xbox One, but if you have it I’d consider checking it out.
Sunset Overdrive offers a great deal of content, but the overall lack of variety hindered my willingness to venture far beyond the main storyline. The side missions and challenges were fairly repetitive. I got around 10 to 12 hours of solid content, but there was likely another 20+ more that I left untouched. For those who enjoy the game’s mechanics, there should be plenty of content to quench their thirst. If you don’t enjoy the mechanics, though, you’ll get bored or frustrated very quickly.
This game requires a decent amount of multitasking. The player will have to bounce and grind on various objects while shooting at enemies. It’s about as difficult as it sounds, especially at first. Eventually I got the hang of it, but I don’t think I ever really enjoyed it. Anyone who isn’t good at multitasking will have an extremely difficult time with this game.
It gets a lot easier once you realize that meleeing enemies is a lot easier and more effective than trying to shoot them.
2. Parental Notices
Violence is a prominent factor in this game. The player will kill thousands of enemies over the course of the campaign. How the player chooses to kill these enemies will vary depending on the player’s preferred combat style. The game encourages players to use ranged weapons, each of which can have a very different effect. The Dirty Harry and the Flaming Compensator are fairly close to real-life weapons (albeit with elemental damage effects). 
Perfectly balanced no matter what!
But there are plenty of other, more exotic weapons. The Acid Sprinker shoots a small sprinkler on the ground that spins around and sprays nearby enemies with acid. The TNTeddy fires an explosive teddy bear with devastating effect. The Dude fires a bowling ball at supersonic speeds. The list goes on for a long time.
Violence can get lost in the explosions of color.
However, I eventually found that these weapons were far less effective than the standard melee attack. When the player gives his melee attack additional effects, it can be far more efficient at clearing out large groups of enemies without incurring additional damage or worrying about ammunition.
Melee all day!
While hits from most weapons will cause at least some blood to appear, hits from stronger melee attacks can lead to buckets of it. The OD pop into a gush of orange “blood”.
Night time makes the orange seem darker.
But any human enemies will explode into red blood.
Sometimes wetwork can get a bit messy.
The player can also add a number of elemental effects to attacks. The one that I tended to use regularly was fire, since it would do a high amount of damage in a decently large area. This may have lit enemies on fire, but I never saw it if it did.
Light 'em up!
There is gore in the game, but if it’s present in the normal combat I never really noticed it. It is more obvious in certain specific cutscenes, but these were few and far between. The most obvious example I could find is one cutscene where a random human character gets decapitated by a new enemy type.
A surprisingly clean slice.
However, despite the images depicted above, the very cartoonish nature of the violence keeps it from being a more significant factor overall.
Sexuality does come into play occasionally, but this game isn’t even close to something like Saints Row in terms of amount and type of sexual content. Characters flirt with each other occasionally and the game does include crude humor, but usually this isn’t a huge issue. There are weapons such as the “Flaming Compensator”, which is a large shotgun with two fuel tanks (designed to look like vaguely phallic in design). 
Once you see it...
However, the game does allow the player to choose a body type and clothing. Each gender has two different body types, a skinny version and a “sexy” version (the game doesn’t call it that, but that’s the best way I can describe it). For men, the sexy version is a super muscular hulk-like body. For women, it’s taller and has large breasts. The player can then put whatever clothing, hairstyle, and accessories he (or she) would like onto the character. All of these options can be applied to either gender of character. So if you’d like a male character that wears a skirt, that’s okay. If you’d like a female character that has facial hair…
Wait, what?
The clothing options can get a bit strange too. This is one of the few games I’ve played that allows the player to customize their underwear. Some of the options are really skimpy. While this is definitely racy on a female character, it’s extremely weird on a male character. The player can run around the entire game wearing these clothes. The player cannot go completely naked though.
Is this a male or female character? You decide!
There are some characters that wear somewhat revealing clothing. They’re not on the screen most of the time, but they play a fairly prominent role in the second half of the campaign.
Dia de los Muertos... cheerleaders?
Overcharge is the only substance of any consequence in this game, but it is featured prominently. Overcharge is portrayed as a new energy drink with unfortunate side effects. It basically turns people into orange goo-zombies. The main character is one of the few people left in the city that hasn’t consumed it or been killed by those who have consumed it. 
I wonder if energy drinks actually have launch parties like this.
Everything in this game is affected by or advertises Overcharge. Fizz Co., the company that designed and distributed the drink, basically owns the entire town and has plastered advertisements everywhere. This includes the various manufacturing, bottling, and distribution plants it has littered throughout the city. There are even pools of Overcharge placed throughout the city. Any time Overcharge is spilt on the ground, the OD come running.
Overcharge turns people into monsters... and grants superpowers!
There is one other brief event that is worth mentioning. In one mission the player has to give medicine to a person who thinks he is the king of a band of medieval knights. This band has partially lost their mind, so they 100% believe that they are living in medieval times. Since they don’t believe in modern medicine, the only way to give the king medicine is to cover the main character in leeches, drink a full bottle of medicine, then put the leeches (who are now full of medicinal blood) onto the king. It would be really stupid, dangerous logic in real life, but then again that could describe a lot of this game.
There is so much horribly wrong with this logic.
Gambling is not a factor in this game.
3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
Anti-law is not a factor in this game.
The player can join other players in a cooperative horde mode online, but the community seemed fairly civil overall. As with any online community, there will be rogue elements, but I don’t expect it to be a significant factor in this game’s multiplayer modes.
Extreme sports is very prominent in this game. The player has the ability to grind along any rail-like surface and bounce off of almost any square object in the environment. Both of these are very cartoonish. For example, the player can easily bounce off of the roof of a car or an open glass skylight or a large bush. The player’s actions aren’t supposed to be realistic at all. 
Approaching the speed of light.
This mechanic is the main feature of the game. Almost every moment of this game will be spent bouncing or grinding, even while in combat. The game’s mechanics also encourage the player to continue bouncing and grinding, since these increase the player’s “style meter”, which gives the player extra abilities.
Killing with style!
The only reason why this category isn’t higher is because of the cartoonishness. While it is possible to jump high with a trampoline or grind along a rail, it isn’t possible to pull off what the player can do in this game.
Each character is allowed to add magical powers onto their weapons and abilities. These powers vary in effect, but they’re definitely magical in nature. I found that the offensive abilities were extremely useful in keeping large amounts of enemies in check.
The way that the power is activated can change as well. Some powers are activated by bouncing, others by grinding, etc. The game never goes into much detail to explain where the powers come from, but they’ll be vital throughout the game.
Only magic can explain how someone can wall run on a convex wall.
Language Language is a serious factor in this game. Many of the characters will swear frequently during normal conversations. It’s not enough to be jarring, but it’s definitely enough to be obvious. The player can choose to censor the swearing in the options menu, and the game makes this pretty obvious during the initial loading screen. 
1 Comment
Joseph Sutton
5/26/2015 09:49:07 pm
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