New-gen consoles have come under a lot of flak since their release almost a year ago; at first it was a lack of great exclusive content on either console (Xbox One seemed to win that battle though), then people were arguing that they weren’t really games consoles anymore but low spec PC’s due to the array of apps now available, allowing for both video streaming and browsing the internet. It is no secret that due to some of this negative press both manufacturers have struggled for sales and are pretty much haemorrhaging money; to combat it we’ve seen a few exclusives appear that seem to have in some way temporarily stitched the wounds that the cash is spurting out of but, until games stop being produced for the PS3 and 360 they will in my opinion continue to struggle. The latest effort from Microsoft to try and encourage gamers to upgrade their old consoles to an Xbox One comes in the form of Sunset Overdrive, an open-world third-person shooter developed by Insomniac Games and published by Microsoft Studios.
Now the guys at Insomniac Games insist that you’ll never have played anything like this before, and to an extent they’re right, never before have I been grinding along a fence post while firing records at a horde of mutants. However, at the same time everything seems familiar as you notice little things that appear to have been replicated from other games, I just don’t know if it was deliberately orchestrated to be like that or if it is just a huge coincidence. I’ll cover each area more in how they remind me of games from my past further into review but for now let’s move on to the storyline.
I won’t ruin the game for anyone story wise, no spoiler alert needed here. This is partly due to the fact that I’m not a massive C**T who wants to ruin the game for people, but also because the guys at Microsoft Studios have ordered us not to. What I can do though is sum up the plot that is clearly visible in the games advertisements online and on your TV, which is a horrible accident that happens when energy drinks company FizzCo release a product to the market earlier than they should have, cutting short their testing phase due to pressure from shareholders. The result is that anyone who drinks it begins to mutate into mutants that look similar to the flood from Halo, it is then your mission to work with other survivors to try and escape Sunset City. What I will also tell you about the story is that it truly is engrossing, that’s partly thanks to the humour which seems to have taken a leap out of the Borderlands playbooks and to the numerous twists and turns that the game takes making it less predictable than other third-person shooters you will have played in the past.
Moving on to the style of the game it is great and confusing at the same time. Great because the graphical styling reminds me somewhat of Jet Set Radio, a game I’m sure many of you have played where you spend your time skating and grinding around numerous futuristic environments. It isn’t as cartoony as the old Sega game but it certainly reminds me of it in the way the game is constructed and you can get from A to B grinding along railings and using some sick acrobatic moves. Where it gets confusing for me though is that on Jet Set Radio you were always wearing skates to help you get around, but in Sunset Overdrive you don’t so how the hell does he manage to grind along fences and telephone wires? Does he have some special kind of boots on? I don’t know, but it gets more confusing when you start zip lining between telephone poles. I mean I understand that you can zip line on wires, although switching the directions you’re heading in seems somewhat implausible especially when one second you go downhill then switch to going back up. Now I am probably just overthinking this whole thing because I know anything can happen in a game, but usually there is some physics behind what is going on but in Sunset City I just get completely lost.
That said it doesn’t take any of the fun away from the game for me, if anything it’s a little better because I like to think there are still things out there that can’t be explained, it’d be boring if there was an answer to everything. However I don’t like the fact of how familiar the enemy is to the flood from Halo. It isn’t that they look out of place or that they don’t look well designed because you can tell the difference between the two if you put them next to each other but there is the obvious comparison that both look like mutated humans, have boils on their bodies and they even have one enemy that starts to expand and explode known as poppers which is exactly like the carriers from Halo. This is one of the areas where I don’t know whether it was a deliberate copy from another game with the switch from looking more zombieish to more of a mutated monster, or whether what I have spotted just seems to be a coincidence. The enemy does differ though when it comes to the bosses which appear to be completely original in design and aren’t like anything I have seen on other games I have played.
That is pretty much all the negative points I had out the way, and they weren’t even that bad really. Where the game does really start to get into its own unique style is with the gameplay, it can be difficult to master at first but once you really get into the flow of things you’d swear you were a real life expert in parkour and shooting mutated humans who want to kill you. The game pretty much plays like any open game allowing you to move freely around Sunset City, however instead of flinging yourself through the sky using web or turning into a puff of smoke and flying up chimneys and vents you jump on cars, run along walls, grind and leap from telephone wires. While doing this you’ll have to mix up your movements and perform special moves in order to pull off great combo attacks which can help you out when being swarmed by the OD’d (the name given to mutated humans). The better the combos and aerobic moves you put together will help you when it comes to powering up special attacks, so it is important to keep moving and to switch things up.
Now the tricky part is mastering the whole grinding along fences and shooting enemies at the same time, if you’ve got poor hand eye coordination it is going to be tricky as not only are there moving targets but you’re moving too. Now you can put the brakes on and slow down so it is easier to aim but some enemies will still be able to hit you, more so the bosses you’ll face, this is where your boost becomes handy that gives you that little enhancement to help you dodge incoming projectiles. Once you’ve mastered the movement though you’ll have new techniques to master because one of the other helpful things to learn is making the most of your weapons, well the variety of them anyway. For example you’ll have some that manage to burn the target leaving their defence weakened, and then a more powerful weapon can be used to take away bigger chunks of its health. It’s the same as in the likes of Destiny, you’ll have weapons that take down an enemy’s shield quickly but then an alternate weapon that will cause more damage once the shield is down. So it is an important thing to master because it really does come in handy.
As for the weapons you’ll get on the game they somewhat remind me of Dead Rising, in the way that a lot of what you find is homemade and…well not something you’d find even on the black market in real life. For example you’ll have a gun that fires records which bounce from enemy to enemy and a gun that has two mini basket balls and a long musket type barrel making it look like a cock and balls. It’s this kind of creative tongue in cheek humour that really helps bring the game to life and it isn’t just the crafting of weapons but also the way the story unfolds and the conversations between characters. It’s almost as if they have learnt how successful Borderlands was with the games humour being one of the main contributing characteristics to the success and they’ve wanted to introduce this into their own game. It works well but in all honestly nothing is going to beat Claptrap and Tiny Tina with the hilarious crap that comes from their mouths.
Like most games these days, with Sunset Overdrive you don’t just have normal weapons but upgradable ones which mean more damage, better range and other magical effects. Now upgrades are usually quite simple in games but Sunset Overdrive wanted to be different and make it a little more confusing. To upgrade your weapons and your characters abilities you use Amps, something that you discover early on in the game and which are created up by one of the NPCs named Floyd who you’ll find at your main base in Sunset City. Now applying amps seems easy enough, it appears to just be a case of getting them and selecting where you want to allocate them, but it soon gets a little confusing when you discover certain ones can only be applied to weapons once that weapon is levelled up. Now to get amps themselves you can purchase them from Floyd if you find certain collectibles around the city and trade them in, or you can pick them up as rewards on story missions. There are lots to collect all with different abilities so find what suits your style best and mix and match to turn you into the ultimate mutant killing machine.
As for the multiplayer experience in Sunset City, known as Chaos Squad, well it’s good but not the best, although saying that it is recommended to play with 6-8 players and not just two like I did. The whole idea of Chaos Squad is based upon one of the first missions you do where it is your job to defend vats of Overcharge Delirium XT from waves of the OD’d. The main aim is simple, you have to defend against incoming waves with friends whilst trying to also outperform them with style to get a higher score. Now I was hoping that there would be more than just a continuous wave mode, something that lets you roam around Sunset City with mates or a PvP mode but I can see the wave mode being a hell of a lot of fun just crushing continuous waves with about eight of you getting pissed. As for doing it with just two of you it probably isn’t as fun but I still had a good time.
Overall it is a great game and it still has me saying that XBOX ONE (or more so Microsoft as most exclusives are on PC too) seems to have the better and more fun filled exclusives compared to the PS4. From the tongue in cheek humour to the unique style of gameplay, we finally have a great mixture for a third-person shooter that can appeal not just too serious gamers but casual ones as well. It is well worth getting but is it enough to get people swapping their old consoles for an XBOX ONE? Well it may turn a few heads, but with third party developers still making games like CoD, FIFA and Destiny for the previous generation of consoles it is going to be a while before they start to see a huge influx of gamers upgrading to this latest generation.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
