Sunset Overdrive Review

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical and reluctant to try Insomniac Games, Sunset Overdrive. After watching several game-play videos and trailers, I began to feel like there was too much action happening at once on the screen. Boy was I right. But, no one said that was a bad thing. In fact, it’s a great thing, just be prepared to test your hand-eye coordination, quite a bit.

Most open world video games that include quests and side missions tend to get boring and feel rather tedious. Sunset Overdrive seems to follows that outline to an extent; however it happens to be less “naggy” when you decide to change your mind and focus on something else. Nope, there are no tiny fairies shouting “Hey” or “Listen” at you when you decide to go off course. In fact, venturing elsewhere can be rewarding at times because killing multiple enemies can improve your characters stats and abilities.

Sure, completing objectives can lead to advancement in story and possibly new weapons and upgrades, but continuous story progression can sometimes feel like a chore. For instance, Sunset City is filled with tons of characters and personalities but almost everyone you bump into needs help, more specially… your help. So, why not stretch you’re legs and kill a few bad-guys along the way. Just be careful.

Sunset Overdrive  does not play like a typical third person shooter. Running and gunning on foot literally gets you nowhere. For example, Games like Gears of War and Uncharted are played by conserving ammo and hiding behind cover. Whereas Sunset Overdrive lets the player loose and enables them to fight from all directions of the map.

Whether you fight on ground, in the air or on-top of a building, the player is allowed to take the fight anywhere and baddies certainly mean to follow. This is where things get a little crazy. Each character posses the ability to swing and grind on power cables, has the ability to climb and run on walls like a hyper spider-man and can dash in the air like a Jedi-master –all while trying to fight or escape a wave of enemies. It took some time to learn and adjust to these abilities, but once i did, i was an unstoppable killing machine with a mohawk.

Customising my character in Sunset Overdrive was the coolest thing in the video game. Sure, there are tons of interesting weapons and folks you meet along your adventure, but the ability to create my character however I see fit meant a lot to me and made me feel like I was a part of the game. Although character customisation felt a bit limited at first, I still had a blast dressing my hero in punk-rock clothes,  a stylish red Mohawk, geeky black glasses and a grizzled beard. Not only did I find this to be comical and hilarious while putting him together, it also gave me a sense of owner ship and differentiated myself from other corky characters from within Sunset City.

From customising my character to shooting monsters with oddly designed weapons, I never laughed so hard or felt so alive as I did in Sunset Overdrive. Being able to fly in the air and grind on rails in sandals, never really made sense to me nor did it have to. In fact, a lot from within Sunset City didn’t seem to make much sense, but i did appreciated the fact that the title never took itself too seriously and indeed acknowledge its existence for what it truly was, a F***in video game.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.