Roxie’s Underrated Reviews: Sunset Overdrive

There comes a point in an individual’s life where they just want to blow stuff up. There also comes a point where this same individual decides to blow stuff up, and have fun doing it. So why not just play some good ol’ Sunset Overdrive instead and save yourself an act of terrorism, destruction of property, and general mass endangerment which an insanity plea sadly won’t get you out of. I mean heck, the protagonist is probably just as much of an arsonist as you are (note, the female voice actress is a top notch chaos destruction-incarnate), but at the fraction of the cost of a military-grade improvised explosive device.

And yes: There are booms – lots of booms. I won’t spoil much besides the introduction, but you’re set into a semi-modern world where an energy drink company turns the whole world into a bunch of mutated freaks, called OD. I presume that’s short for “over-dosers.” These OD terrorize the city and are insanely thirsty for more Overcharge. As you can imagine, it might get a little hectic. But thankfully, you have tons of awesome, insane weapons that you can use at your disposal. I’ll give you a hint: One even spews exploding teddy-bears.

If you couldn’t tell already, this game was made by the same developers and company behind Ratchet and Clank: Insomniac Games. Oh Insomniac, my beautiful maiden, caress me with your soft hand-grenades and your big, ginormous, horrendously and unnecessarily large laser-beams. Give me an AK-47 and let me literally waste every mutant beast in sight as they drop out of thin air. Please oh please, make me shout in glee and absolute terrorism as I dance around and laugh like a madman shooting fireworks out of my big patriotic rocket-launcher.

I’m sorry, if this doesn’t give you enough to play this game already, I don’t know what you’re doing with your life (except being actually productive with your time – but who wants that anyways). If you’re still not convinced, let me ask you this: What game will make you actually wet your pants from laughing so hard from the quests, but will also run fairly well on any sort of low-grade gaming rig? What other game has a protagonist that’s so much of an absolute heathen and gen-Z that you just feel at home grinding on the tops of buildings? And no you pervert, not that type of… nevermind.

It’s just flippin’ fun, okay? People these days just don’t know how to relax and just enjoy themselves a lot of the time – it’s really sad. One of the best mechanics in the game – and the primary mechanic – is called grinding. If you aren’t sliding along something with your feet or you crowbar, you aren’t moving very fast. And if you aren’t moving very fast, it’s very easy for you to actually die in the game. The damage taken out of the health bar is pretty fierce, and it can surprisingly be very challenging unless you know what you’re doing.

 

Plus, the more you grind, the more you can combo things. And the more you combo, the more you can gain different power-ups that you can assign to yourself. Along with this, you can modify your guns with certain power-ups and modules which produce a certain desired or bonus effect that can give you the upper hand in battle. Long story short, there’s a lot to do – because even quests are shown on your map, and there are a lot of them. Many collectibles actually add up as well, and unlock many other things such as story secrets and generally wanting to scream because you keep missing that one jump to get that certain collectible.

As you progress, you get more ways and forms of movement. One such way that I’m very fond of is the air dash. Another is jumping on things like a trampoline, but I’ve only gotten about a half if not less through the main story at this point, so I’m sure there are more. Also note that this game was released in 2014 for the Xbox One, and they prioritized quality over quantity, and this game isn’t something for kids unless they’re accustomed to verbal profanity and have the maturity to use said words responsibly in today’s society. The music is also fantastically good: It’s chaotic surfer-rock with punk elements.

One of the biggest highlights that I didn’t even touch on so far – and I had to add this paragraph while I was searching up images – is the fashion system. Yes, you can have a kick-butt, butch (gosh I don’t like censoring) girl with one heck of a nice haircut. I personally like rocking booty-shorts with bad-girl tattoos and goth makeup, complimenting hair-dye and a tube-bra underneath a denim jacket. Yeah, I’m that type of girl, sue me. There are also tons of ridiculous costumes you can choose from.

My point is, Insomniac Games makes great products that retain a lot of the pure fun that you miss out on while playing modern games these days. If you want to give their style a try, this is definitely one I personally recommend.

You can find Sunset Overdrive for the Xbox One and for your Gaming PC but you still won’t find it on a PlayStation 4 console with no confirmation that it will ever get ported over.

Roxie out, love y’all.